johnpierce.us Blog

Elgar: Violin Concerto

CD,

amazon.co.uk

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“Nikolaj Znaider’s concert schedule in 2010 reaches its climax at the Barbican on November 10, when he plays Elgar’s Violin Concerto on the 100th anniversary of the first performance, with the orchestra of the premiere, the LSO, using the 1741 Guarnerius del Gèsu played on that occasion by the commissioner and dedicatee of the work, Fritz Kreisler. The conductor will be Colin Davis, with whom Znaider gave the concerts in Dresden last June from which live recordings were taken. The results are magisterial.”–from review by Hugh Canning, The Times, 5 stars

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“Occasionally, a recording comes along which radically changes a great piece: Nikolaj Znaider’s amazing account of Elgar’s Violin Concerto is revolutionary. Its marketing pitch is that Znaider plays the same violin that Kreisler used for the premiere a century ago, but his approach abandons tradition for total freshness and rethinking. His playing is phenomenally precise, electric in its impact (listen to those triple-stopped chords and piercing top notes in the finale), perhaps lacking some warmth. The Dresden Staatskapelle and Colin Davis give gloriously idiomatic support; the open question is how truly Elgarian is Znaider’s very 21st-century virtuosity?”–Nicholas Kenyon, The Observer, guardian.co.uk

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