Fiddlers: Flying Fingers, Smiling Faces

Paganini’s D-major Violin Concerto has long been put down as the ultimate vehicle for virtuosity for its own sake: in effect, a long, mindless cadenza. And it can be rather awful in the wrong hands, the wrongest of which would be those that show you what hard work it all is.

On the other hand, it’s a wonderful score when the protagonist can project his pleasure not only in leaping the hurdles but in showing that it’s not all in one key, so to speak.

The virtues of the concerto were positively made to glow by Itzhak Perlman in his EMI recording of some 20 years ago. And the magic is worked again now by a 30-year-old Russian named Ilya Kaler (Naxos 550649).

Kaler’s clear rejoicing in his own skills is part of the pleasure of what is, after all, hardly deep-think music. But this violinist is not blindly intent on showing you what he can do with Paganini’s technical challenges. He is attentive as well to the wit and modest lyricism of the score, in which he has the estimable assistance of the American conductor Stephen Gunzenhauser, who leads an alert Polish National Radio Symphony (Katowice).

Here, as in the Chopin piano concertos, we tend to notice the orchestral contribution only if it is very good or very bad. In this instance, it’s decidedly the former, with Gunzenhauser smartly maintaining momentum and capturing the Rossinian verve that is buried within the faceless orchestral continuo the accompaniment becomes in less caring hands.

Kaler is superbly adept at executing the flying spiccatos and multiple-stop hazards of the Concerto, but unlike many another young whiz, he doesn’t slack off when it comes to shaping the little lyric phrases Paganini supplies for contrast.

The violinist’s ability to spin the long line is of even greater value in the coupling, Paganini’s Concerto in B minor, always overshadowed by the flashier work in D, despite the former’s celebrated “Campanella” finale.

In sum, Kaler displays a compleat virtuoso arsenal here: rhythmic vitality, warmth of tone and sentiment and, of course, the ability to encompass the notes without strain--all bolstered by the requisite dose of ego.

The already sufficiently attractive package, in excellent sonics, becomes an astonishing bargain to boot in view of Naxos’ usual, laughably modest price.

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Comparison with a legendary master was not Naxos’ intention, and will, insofar as possible, be circumvented. Yet, it’s not easy, given the arrival on the same day as Kaler’s disc a collection of showpieces played by Jascha Heifetz (EMI 64929, 2 CDs, mid- price).

This isn’t the often impatient, dismissive Heifetz of the latter stages of his great career, but the wonderfully intense and humane virtuoso of the 1930s.

There’s big, impressive stuff in the set: Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata and the Franck Sonata, with Benno Moiseiwitsch and Artur Rubinstein, respectively, as Heifetz’s keyboard partners. But that’s not what the program is about. It’s about the two dozen encore pieces, including the inevitable high-speed dazzlers, Bazzini’s “Ronde des lutins,” the Dinicu “Hora Staccato” and tasty tidbits by Wieniawski, Poulenc, Korngold, Moszkowski, Albeniz, et al.

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The high-speed, flashy stuff is wonderful--smilingly so. Even more impressive is the caressing warmth, the subtle rubatos, the expressive slides that mark the lyrical material, such as “An einsamer Quelle” of Richard Strauss, Dohnanyi’s “Gypsy Andante” and “Roxana’s Song” by Szymanowski.

Certain stylistic aspects of his playing may hardly be to the tastes of many of our younger violinists nor, for that matter, were they to the taste of the later, tougher Heifetz.

No one plays like the ‘30s Heifetz any longer, nor perhaps should anyone try to revive too many details of the past and a unique performer. But certainly Heifetz’s rhythmic energy and unwavering engagement will never be out of style.

Perhaps artists such as Kaler, Maxim Vengerov and Julian Rachlin--not coincidentally, all from the same part of the world--are extending the gentle push back into the direction of what is heard in these treasurable reissues, a process begun by Itzhak Perlman at the start of his remarkable career.*