Fiddling: State of the Art Past, Present and Future

Two different aspects of the state of the art of fiddling are represented by 30-year-old Anne-Sophie Mutter, with the Berg Violin Concerto as her vehicle (Deutsche Grammophon 437 093), and 46-year-old Gidon Kremer, in a hand-in-glove partnership with pianist Martha Argerich, in Prokofiev’s two duo sonatas (Deutsche Grammophon 431 803).

There’s promise of a bright future--indicated already by a hugely impressive present--in an offering by Pamela Frank, only in her early 20s, who is masterfully abetted at the piano by Claude Frank, her father, in a pair of Beethoven sonatas (MusicMasters) 67087).

The past is honored with Melodiya’s re-release (10-00479) of classic interpretations by the late David Oistrakh: concertos of Sibelius and Hindemith (the latter’s 1939 beauty) with, again, the kind of partnering that bespeaks the deepest sympathy, from conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

Listeners preoccupied with the refined spirituality of Berg’s Concerto are unlikely to warm to the Mutter method. Hers is a grand conception, singing rather than sighing its way through every magnificent measure of Berg’s lament with optimum voluptuousness of tone and emotional generosity.

Mutter’s colleagues are flawlessly attuned to her outspoken interpretation: conductor James Levine doing as much listening--as was his laudable custom in the early days of his career--as leading, and what he leads is a Chicago Symphony playing with superhuman point, precision and allure: the vast chamber ensemble of the composer’s dreams.

The coupling is a darkly compelling, perhaps Berg-inspired work created specifically for Mutter, “Gesungene Zeit” (Time Sung--whatever that means), by the 40-year-old German Wolfgang Rihm, which may take some time to sink in completely but on initial hearings seems worth the listener’s time and effort.

Kremer and Argerich are two of an increasingly rare breed, performers who live on the edge: improvisatory rather than fixed in their interpretive attitudes, bursting with energy, intelligence and the need to project their music as a vital experience.

Their Prokofiev takes all possible risks and triumphs at every turn. They employ the most precipitous gradations of speed and dynamics, with startling alternations of emotional ferocity and fine-spun delicacy. But nothing here sounds contrived or misjudged.

Never has this listener felt the mixture of drama, grief and gentle fantasy of the opening movement of the undervalued Opus 80 Sonata so keenly balanced and communicated as it is by this inspired team.

And Kremer-Argerich are no less convincing and original in the better-known Opus 94a Sonata, whose much prettier tunes they finish with a becoming dramatic edge.

Pamela Frank, best known outside the East Coast for her appearances with the touring Musicians From Marlboro, is likewise a fiery, no-holds barred violinist: a personality. Her--and her father’s--view of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata is dramatic and driven, replete with a full, resonant, richly vibratoed tone.

Yet she is able to delineate the gentler mood and less powerfully articulated sound requirements of the D-major Sonata from Opus 12 with gracious ease, making that work hers as well.

David Oistrakh was a remarkably refined musician, for all his identification with Romantic repertory and “virtuosity.” He was addicted neither to fat, uniformly throbbing tone nor to line-destroying excesses of portamento and rubato.

He served composers and audiences equally with the directness of his musicianship, allied to unassuming, but total, technical command.

It might be noted, too, that these 1960s recordings are sonically superior--vastly so--to nearly anything else emanating from the then-Soviet Union. Oistrakh even made his engineers surpass themselves.