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Mozart: Violin Concertos 3-5 - Manze

Mozart: Violin Concertos 3-5 - Manze

Harmonia Mundi  HMU 807385

Stereo/Multichannel Hybrid

Classical - Orchestral


Mozart: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 3 in G major K.216, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 4 in D major K.218, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 5 in A major K.219

The English Concert
Andrew Manze


These 3 innovative concertos - composed in the last four months of 1775 to entertain Mozart's noble employer and to mollify his father Leopold - show Wolfgang the wunderkind blossoming into a fully-fledged compositional genius. Andrew Manze plays his own cadenzas.

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Comment by Ramesh Nair - December 22, 2015 (1 of 1)

Site review by ramesh March 25, 2006

The best summary of Manze's approach to these works comes from the concluding paragraph of his liner notes : "Far from the modern, post-Classical notion of the concerto as a conflict between the one and the many, a Helden-soloist struggling against the massed ranks of an anonymous orchestra, the concerto was a communal effort in the early classical era."
This is a period version of the three greatest of the five accepted Mozart violin concertos, and faces stiff competition on SACD from the ongoing complete cycle by Julia Fischer and colleagues on PentaTone. The orchestra is medium sized, with the strings divided 5, 5, 3, 2, 1. There is no continuo, and the pitch is A=415. The cadenzas are Manze's own, composed succinctly in period style. The frontispiece of the notes reproduces an illustration from Leopold Mozart's treatise on violin playing as to how to hold the bow correctly. Presumably this is to underline these works were composed at the start of the classical era, when composers started to expect a greater dynamic range from the instrument.

Although the Köchel numbers for these works, 216, 218 & 219, indicate plenty of musical water under bridge, Mozart was nineteen when he composed them. It is arguable where the Mozartean genius first showed its incandescence. Some point to the Divertimenti K 136-8, or the piano concerto K 175. The musicologist Alfred Einstein was in never in any doubt that divinity had a lusty how's-your-father in the adagio of the Third Violin concerto. Taken as a group, the five concerti composed within a few months are the first rich strike of the mother lode.

The recording, which is in pure DSD, has the orchestra relatively close-up, with good depth for a small band of players. Faithful to his written statement, the presentation of these works is more in keeping with the early Mozart orchestral divertimenti which have a violin obbligato. All too often in violin concertos, there is a jumbo sized soloist with the orchestra relegated to distant penal servitude. Here, despite the immediate recording, Manze sounds closer to his orchestra than he does to the listener, at least listening in stereo. Nevertheless, his playing is never overwhelmed by the orchestra, but a dialogue. ( This conversational acumen is also present in the admirable Philips SACD of four Mozart violin sonatas by Uchida and Steinberg.) Manze is acclaimed as a period soloist without vinegary tone or acerbity, and continues his deserved technical reputation here. His ornamentation is less florid than in some other period performances. The imaging of the recording is so precise that one can hear the solo violin spread widely between the speaker plane at times; this could possibly be due to Manze swaying his instrument as he plays.

The only bothersome agogic distortion in this disc unfortunately occurs within a few seconds of the start, when Manze horribly slows the ending of the first theme, which is faithfully underlined by the orchestral tutti; like Mikhail Pletnev at almost his most wilful. Otherwise the phrasing is uncontroversial. His performances seem to be a happy medium between modern instruments and the period performances of the earlier baroque violin repertoire. A previous 2 CD set of the concertos in modern instruments, from Pamela Frank with David Zinman in Arte Nova 7432172104 had some semblance of the period style, with a stripped down orchestra and excellent recording. By comparison, Manze is brisker in tempi than Frank except for all of the finales, where she is consistently faster. I have only heard the Fischer PentaTone SACD which includes K216 in a shop. Fischer obviously exploits the tonal resources of the modern violin, and her version can be confidently recommended to those who prefer the nonperiod sound. Admirable a player as Frank is on her CDs, Fischer has a slightly greater dynamic and tonal range in certain passages. I haven't heard Mutter's recent CD only complete set, but criticism has followed it for being self-conscious examples of great instrumental prowess first, with classical proportion taking a back seat. Fischer's performance avoids these pitfalls. However, anyone who is committed to the Fischer SACDs should still consider Manze. This is because of the remarkable amount of detail audible from the orchestra. CDs of these concertos from the very early digital era sounded terrible, with screeching strings and horns sounding like background synthesizers. The excellent recording with period instruments elicits a marvellous range of tonal colours, which would be washed out with modern instuments no matter how impeccable the recording. The horns have timbral character rather than one-fundamental blare, and the closely observed woodwind have a rustic woodiness. The heavenly adagio of K216 sounds more Elysian here than any other performance I've heard, like a premonition of the famous soprano trio from Cosi Fan Tutte, when the muted violins enter, and the violin solo complementing the mood and texture ideally. The vibratoless strings avoid the saccharine tendencies which can make this movement sound treacly rather than chaste.

As for Manze, urbanity is the best word to describe his interpretations. The sound from soloist and orchestra is as mellifluous as one could expect from period instruments, with the relative lack of ornamentation being part of the effect. There appear traces of vibrato in Manze's playing, which again might be related to Leopold Mozart's treatise. With respect to say, Oistrakh on EMI, or Perlman on DGG, the relative lack of dynamic range is apparent in the solo line, but only in side-by-side comparisons. There are numerous passages where the violin flies up the higher reaches, but also touches back on the G or D string. With the modern virtuoso, these emphases on the tonic are more heavily bowed, as an accent, but Manze incorporates them more fully into his melodic line. The full streamlined effect of these performances are avoided because the phrasing is consistently broken into smaller bar units. The comparison is most dramatic in Oistrakh's versions with the Berlin Philharmonic, where the Russian structures the works like a full romantic concerto, with each solo entry building up into the climax of the cadenza. Again, Manze gives the impression these are first cousins to the divertimento with violin solo. Where Manze's version trumps all others for drama is in the finale of the 'Turkish' concerto ( which he tells us is more Ottoman-Hungarian), where the col legno bow slapping on strings from the orchestra is a tour-de-force. It makes a rousing finale to a very worthy disc.