Mozart’s Rich Violin Concertos Survive Virtuosity

It is assumed that Mozart wrote all five of his authenticated violin concertos in 1775, when he was 18 years old.

At the beginning of the year, in the B-flat Concerto, K. 207, he already knows all there is to know about form. By the end of the year, with the A-major Concerto, K. 219, his melodic inventiveness has reached what would seem to be insuperable heights as well.

So, to those who claim that Mozart wrote no mature violin concertos, one can respond that he was at 18 as artistically mature as anyone need be, with three gloriously rich concertos, those in G, D (K. 218) and A, as evidence.

These concertos have survived virtuoso treatment--few would deny the potency of Heifetz’s several recordings of the A-major--and they respond to being treated in intimate, chamber-music terms, in period style or otherwise.

Philips’ valuable, in some of its components indispensable, Complete Mozart Edition, suffers a momentary lapse by including the crabbed, tight-toned 1960s performances by the late Henryk Szeryng and members of the New Philharmonia Orchestra under Alexander Gibson’s equally unexpansive direction (422 508, four CDs, mid-price).

Philips would have been better advised to reissue its own, far more appealing performances by the late Arthur Grumiaux and the London Symphony under Colin Davis, which, though no more informed stylistically than the Szeryng-Gibson effort, exhibit a level of artistry and engagement that transcends scholarly considerations.

The Philips set disappoints further with Iona Brown’s uncharacteristically thin, tremulous playing in Mozart’s grandest concerted work involving the violin, the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola, K. 364. Violist Nobuko Imai is a standout technician and stylist, but her presence is blunted under the circumstances.

The rewards of this package are convincing reconstructions by Philip Wilby of concertante works Mozart left incomplete, one for violin, piano and orchestra, another for violin, viola, cello and orchestra. Too bad they aren’t available separately.

K. 364 is better served by violinist Josef Suk, who also leads the Suk Chamber Orchestra, and Thomas Kakuska, violist of the Alban Berg Quartet (Vanguard Classics 7001).

Suk’s tone is on the dry side, but Kakuska compensates with big-toned, vibrant playing. The solo instruments are recorded with stunning clarity and in ideal balance with the orchestra.

The generously filled CD also includes Suk’s energetic, clean-lined readings of the Concertos in D, K. 211, and G, K. 216, both, however, gussied up with inapt, late-Romantic cadenzas by Henri Marteau.

The stature, profundity and charm of K. 364 are honored in another of those remarkable LaserLight bargains (15880)--selling for less than $5--in which Christian Altenburger and Berlin Philharmonic principal Wolfram Christ are the violin and viola soloists, with Helmut Winschermann directing the German Bach Soloists. The companion piece is the Concerto in A, warmly, elegantly delivered by Altenburger.

Salvatore Accardo treats K. 207 and K. 218 respectfully as both soloist and conductor of the Prague Chamber Orchestra. The recording (Nuova Era 6926), however, projects a tone both bigger and harsher (particularly in double stops) than what one recalls from Accardo live. Then too his intonation is on the droopy side, and the cadenzas, by contemporary Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino, strike these ears as fussy and overwrought.

Most of Mozart’s later-years composing for violin is in the form of duo-sonatas with keyboard--as splendid a body of music as has ever been created for this combination.

In the first volume (RCA Red Seal 60447) of an announced traversal of the entire canon--there are 35 sonatas, including juvenilia--Pinchas Zukerman and Marc Neikrug offer playing that may be a size or two too large for the music. But their work in behalf of the splendid Sonatas in F and G, K. 377 and K. 377, the G-minor variations, K. 360, and baby Amadeus’ K. 8, is technically masterful, energetic and grandly affectionate.

If you’re looking for comparable self-confident mastery in the concertos, be advised of Sony’s reissue on its bargain Odyssey label (45614, two CDs) of the authentic five and some shorter works executed with splendid panache and stylistic savvy by Isaac Stern. The orchestras are conducted by George Szell and Alexander Schneider.