Friday 15 July 2011

At the moment, practically every music-related publication I pick up seems to feature a full page colour advertisement for a violinist called Charlie Siem. I have no views on Mr Siem and have not yet heard him (mainly since his choice of repertoire to record spells out endless duplications in my collection; the only thing that interested me so far was Wieniawski's first concerto, but I think that was coupled with yet another version of the Bruch G minor concerto. How ambitious).

Which is all a long route to saying that "star" musicians are not necessarily the best of the pack, and I was conscious yesterday evening listening to Josef Suk playing the Dvorak violin concerto (1964) that Suk was a very considerable violinist with, albeit a moderately low-level profile. He spent pretty well all his life in and around Prague appreciated by violin cognoscenti but unheard of by most of the music-loving public in the Western world. Dvorak's violin concerto has had a mediocre career ever since Joachim wriggled out of giving its premiere and, to my knowledge, was not played by violinists such as Kreisler, Heifetz, Elman or Szigeti (Menuhin, Oistrakh and Milstein were exceptions in so far as "big names" pre-1970 were concerned). Its popularity is faring better of late, but I have never really taken to it. I did enjoy Suk's 1964 performance on this current CD, however. His violin playing is wonderful, and he understands about not wallowing in the music and bringing things to a near halt every few minutes. I have neglected my Suk collection (not enough full-page colour advertisements?) I shall dust off the CDs and listen again with interest. Josef Suk died this month at the age of 81; his recorded contribution will live on.

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