Sunday 16 March 2014

James Ehnes and Khachaturian


Since 1996, I have been a fan of the playing of the Canadian violinist, James Ehnes. A rock solid technique, an avoidance of distracting mannerisms, good taste, high intelligence; any performance by James Ehnes almost always ticks the right boxes. His repertoire is wide, and I have especially enjoyed him in Bruch, Britten and Kreisler.

The only box Ehnes has rarely ticked in the past has been evidence of real emotional involvement. I bought his new recording (Khachaturian violin concerto) more on the strength of the other items on the CD (Shostakovich's 7th and 8th string quartets) than on expecting a dazzling performance of Khachaturian's vibrant, colourful and warm-hearted violin concerto. But I was pleasantly surprised; again, Ehnes ticks all the right boxes, but this time he lets himself go and gives us a performance of the concerto to rival my two all-time classics: Julian Sitkovetzky with Niyazi and the Romanian Radio Orchestra (1954), and Leonid Kogan with Monteux in Boston (1958). Melbourne is a long way from Armenia, but the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra players seem to be enjoying themselves. When musicians are having a good time, it shows, and Khachaturian must have made a welcome change for them from non-stop Brahms and Beethoven. England is nearer to Armenia than are Australia or Canada, but the conductor, Mark Wigglesworth enters into the spirit of things. And, to cap it all, Onyx has produced a well-recorded and well-balanced recording. To the groans of “expert” critics, Khachaturian's concerto has found a stable place in the repertoire of 20th century music -- I have 22 different recordings of the piece, and still new ones appear regularly and are usually snapped up by me. Ehnes breaks with tradition and plays Khachaturian's original first movement cadenza, not the Oistrakh one that is usually substituted. But anything is better than Mikhail Simonyan's cadenza that I criticised recently.

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