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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good recording of two interesting pieces, July 20, 2008
This review is from: Philip Glass: Concerto For Violin And Orchestra / Alfred Schnittke: Concerto Grosso No. 5, for Violin, an Invisible Piano & Orchestra - Gidon Kremer (Audio CD)
I agree with reviewer Karl Henzy that the Glass violin concerto does a barely concealed recycling of material from Glass's best work from the 70's and 80's, so I wouldn't call the composition truly original, let alone ground breaking or virtuosic. Even then, I think it has popular appeal, and so the focus is on the solo violinist and then the orchestra. I enjoyed both - I think this is certainly a much better recording than the Naxos one, where the soloist doesn't produce as full a sound as Kremer, though the orchestra is as good. By the way, both three movements of the concerto were used a lot in the soundtrack of Carrère's "La Moustache," and I believe the recording used was the Naxos.
The Schnittke piece is, as one familiar with his work would expect, much more virtuosic in both composition and the demands placed on soloist and conductor. As with the Glass, I enjoyed the playing of Kremer, who really displayed his talent specially in the cadenza-like first quarter of the 3rd movement ("Allegro Vivace"), which I suspect involved microtones, like the rest of the piece. I have to agree with the other reviewers that the emotions expressed in this work are squarely in the heavy and dark side of the spectrum, and which to me are emphasized by the lower to mid register chords of the off-stage piano - they seem to float ominously over the sound of the orchestra and solo violin. And I also think that in its use of both tonality and atonality, this belongs with Schnittke's later work.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Glass Violin Concerto, April 15, 2010
This review is from: Philip Glass: Concerto For Violin And Orchestra / Alfred Schnittke: Concerto Grosso No. 5, for Violin, an Invisible Piano & Orchestra - Gidon Kremer (Audio CD)
The second movement of Glass' concerto is one of the most beautiful violin pieces ever written. And I think that Kremer's rendition captures all the tragic feeling of this piece, which is dark, haunting, obsessive. It is like a real feeling of pain, it starts slowly, in piano, then it reaches the climax and it fades away, slowly, more like becoming a memory of pain. This second movement is nothing like Tchaikovsky's violin concerto: with Glass you cannot afford to burst into tears, because the sorrow is too dignified.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good performance; the music is interesting, but neither composer is captured at his best, September 22, 2010
This review is from: Philip Glass: Concerto For Violin And Orchestra / Alfred Schnittke: Concerto Grosso No. 5, for Violin, an Invisible Piano & Orchestra - Gidon Kremer (Audio CD)
Philip Glass's violin concerto (apparently it's no.1, since he has reportedly written another) was his first large-scale (non-vocal) orchestral works, at least for a regular orchestra. It is also one of his most enduringly popular work, mostly because of the poignant middle movement, and has received several recordings. Stylistically it is a pretty typical works; superimposed rhythmic patterns, motoric ostinatos, simple but effective harmonies and relatively variegated patterns of melodic fragment gradually developed (well, more or less repeated - changed, certainly, but not really ever developed). That said, it isn't a particularly melodic work - it is, indeed, hummable, and many of the figurations stick in the listener's memory, but they can't reasonably be called melodies (rather than melodic fragments). The end effect, however, is interesting, to a large extent due to the interesting contrast between the inherently "songful sound" of the violin, which is never allowed to actually sing in this music, set against the chugging rhythmic patterns of the orchestra. I am not going to claim that it is a great work, not even among Glass's best, but I must say I found it rather attractive.
It is coupled here, somewhat bizarrely, with Schnittke's fifth Concerto grosso. The point of similarity is no more or less than the fact that Schnittke's work is for all practical purposes a violin concerto as well. It is a far grittier work than the Glass, of course, and I suspect that those who are drawn to this release for the Glass might have a hard time coming to terms with it. It purportedly describes a cycle of seasons, with a sardonically lilting mock-waltz for spring, a march-like/dance-like Stravinskian summer, a disconcerting, very aurally disturbing and modernist autumn and a long, haunting, somewhat Shostakovichian winter. It is, in other word, stylistically super-eclectic (although Schnittke didn't at this point quote other composers as he used to), but the net effect is slightly forbidding - it grows on repeated listening, but I cannot really shake the feeling that there is less profundity to the work than it seems to promise the first time around. I cannot imagine more distinguished advocacy than it gets here from Gideon Kremer and Christoph von Dohnanyi with the Vienna Philharmonic (and Rainer Keuschnig on "invisible piano" in the Schnittke); and that goes for the Glass work as well. I am frankly not in a position to determine how they fare in comparison with the competition, but to my ears these sound like very fine and committed performances. The sound is good; recommended, if not a mandatory release.
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