Thursday 28 February 2008

Listened to the 2nd, 4th and 7th concertos of Charles-Auguste de Bériot and was strangely impressed with the music. Much of the 19th century concerto output is musical vapourware, but Bériot obviously had a stronger composing streak than, say, Godard, Ernst or Hubay -- or the concertos of Paganini, come to that. Not bad pieces at all.

That said; like all second or third rate music, it needs love, care and attention such as conductors like Beecham or violinists such as Heifetz, Elman, Kreisler or Rabin used to lavish lovingly on minor works. With the best will in the world, Laurent Albrecht Breuninger (violin) with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie under Frank Beermann are not in the Heifetz-Beecham class. And the recording is "acceptable" rather than demonstration class.

The music is played professionally and accurately. Who could do it properly amongst today's plethora of efficient whizz-kids? Perhaps Janine Jansen, Sarah Chang, Hilary Hahn or Lisa Batiashvili -- or even Maxim Vengerov. But some hope; we are lucky to have Breuninger and his helpers so at least we can hear the notes played accurately and in the proper order .. while waiting for these three concertos played by Heifetz, conducted by Beecham.

Found a kilo of fresh langoustines today. I suspect I have overcooked them, again. I must develop a better langoustine cooking calcuation method.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Harry - I love the de Beriot VC 2 especially - very virtuosic. Nice indeed. There is a VC 2,3 & 5 CD out soon on Naxos by P Quint. I may buy that one as well as Chloe Hanslip's Godard VCs. Regards - Lee

oisfetz said...

Well Harry; everybody knows that on this kind of repertory, Heifetz was unique and unmatched. But we have to want what we can get.