Dutch violin star Janine Jansen brings together the great concerto by Beethoven and the rarely heard concerto by Benjamin Britten - Acclaimed Dutch violinist Janine Jansen fulfills a long-held ambition to record Benjamin B... more »ritten's Violin Concerto alongside the monumental Beethoven Violin Concerto. According to Janine, these are "two of the greatest concertos ever written." Janine has championed the Britten Concerto since she first played it nearly ten years ago. The work, composed while Britten was in his 20s and his first complete composition after arriving in the US in 1939, features both technically brilliant and elegantly lyrical elements. "Whenever a violin repertory piece needs revitalizing, there's one simple solution. Hire Janine Jansen to play it." --The Times, London Janine pairs this 20th-century work with the Beethoven Concerto and brings a similarly new perspective to the work. The recording of the Beethoven follows the acclaimed Beethoven Symphony cycle from the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi.« less
Dutch violin star Janine Jansen brings together the great concerto by Beethoven and the rarely heard concerto by Benjamin Britten - Acclaimed Dutch violinist Janine Jansen fulfills a long-held ambition to record Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto alongside the monumental Beethoven Violin Concerto. According to Janine, these are "two of the greatest concertos ever written." Janine has championed the Britten Concerto since she first played it nearly ten years ago. The work, composed while Britten was in his 20s and his first complete composition after arriving in the US in 1939, features both technically brilliant and elegantly lyrical elements. "Whenever a violin repertory piece needs revitalizing, there's one simple solution. Hire Janine Jansen to play it." --The Times, London Janine pairs this 20th-century work with the Beethoven Concerto and brings a similarly new perspective to the work. The recording of the Beethoven follows the acclaimed Beethoven Symphony cycle from the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi.
CD Reviews
Understanding Jansen's simple, musicianly genius
John H. Beck | NYC/USA | 12/09/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"My short take: if you want your music to push you around, this Beethoven isn't it. If you are willing to step into the circle, stand by Ms. Jansen on the stage as she plays, and let the notes rise up inside you, you will marvel at the Beethoven. In either case, the Britten should just tear you up.
A longer account:
The wonder of music is that we can not only take it in differently, as we do novels and paintings, but that performers can reveal it to us from different directions. I grew up with Jascha Heifetz' recordings of everything violin. I managed classical music stations in Boston and New York City for a dozen years. And the musical presentation I respond to has evolved. Though I'm twice her age, Janine Jansen's interpretations are immensely satisfying for me.
Heifetz was of that generation which hurled the music at you. The performer was a god and you were commanded "Hear!" and "Feel that!" As a young man, all in love with minor keys and outer drama, I loved it, and still do. Jansen's is a different approach. She's from a family of musicians. This is the family business, and like old J.S. Bach, she just pulls it up from her roots.
I first recognized her approach when she did the great Schubert C major Quintet with the group Spectrum Concerts Berlin. (You can find her on many of their Naxos recordings doing wonderful chamber music.) As an adviser to Spectrum I sat in on the rehearsals and thought that they were rather tentative. Then in the splendid thousand seat in-the-round chamber hall of Berlin's Philharmonie I found that I was being invited into a circle of friends, musicians all of us, who had gathered to open up something wonderful that our dear Franz had left behind for us. There were no imperatives -- Hear! Feel! Who needed them? Rather we were all listening from a personal depth. There was no effort to tell us what to think and feel, just an exploration that was so fine, so appreciative, that I felt like I had been Schubert's friend. It was a very powerful experience.
Similarly, this Beethoven concerto is not about how the piece can overwhelm us, but about the genius of Beethoven in putting his talent and his life into it. It's a meditative interpretation, even, with no effort at effects, just a constant surface tension beneath which are genuine depths. If you can really sit and listen in, you will find layers of shellac stripped away, so to speak.
The Britten concerto is a work of great introspection already, written at a truly ghastly moment in modern civilization. Britten, a pacifist, was living in the USA in 1940 while Hitler was preparing to crush the mainland of Europe. The scars of the Spanish Civil War were fresh, and Jansen has picked up on that background. The concerto is wonderfully free and imaginative, reflective and passionately engaged. I feel it as a great English follow-through on the line of musical creation pioneered by Mahler, in which the deep sentiment of Elgar is further refined in grief. And yet this was when Britten was forming his life partnership with Peter Pears, so that there are private hopes and joys involved here, too. Jansen and the orchestra share a real masterpiece with us, and the further you can open yourself to it, the more its tender love and tragedy will move you.
We are blessed with many fine violinists, on stage and in their recordings. Though her label has to promote a certain aura of the diva, Janine Jansen is not really about that. She is a great musician, both young and mature, who treats her audience as fellow musicians, exploring together just what it means to be human. She can do fireworks, easily, but when she does, it always really means something."
A neutral, period-flavored Beethoven concerto oddly matched
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 10/04/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)
"The Dutch violinist Janine Jansen, at 31, comes rather late to a major recording contract with a label like Decca, and since she isn't being promoted as a bright young thing, one hopes that sheer musicianship is her distinctive trait. Of her musicality there can be little doubt. She performs the Beethoven concerto with style and aplomb. The reading is strongly influenced by period style in the orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, a small-scale band playing without vibrato in the strings, but Jansen doesn't follow suit. Although her tone is small, she uses as much expressive vibrato as anyone. Pleasant as Jansen's very even tone is, her avoidance of eloquence is distressing.
Paavo Jarvi has won praise with the same ensemble for their period-tinged Beethoven symphonies, and I will say that he's not anemic. There's energy and momentum in his conducting, and he inserts punchy attacks that aren't exactly written down. These are external traits, however, and I don't hear an actual interpretation from Jarvi. In fact, apart from a certain period timbre, this is a straightforward conventional accompaniment. Jansen's approach is rather neutral, too, without so much as a personal statement in any movement, although her playing is exemplary from bar to bar. Perhaps the cleanness and purity of her playing is the great appeal, but this is tame Beethoven.
As a unique pairing, she has personally chosen a favorite modern concerto, the Britten, which fairly recently got a brilliant recording from Daniel Hope, which managed to eclipse an excellent one from Maxim Vengerov. The orchestra switches to the London Sym., and they sound ravishing. The young Britten had heard the Berg concerto and been overwhelmed. His own concerto isn't thorny harmonically, but it is personal and at times enigmatic. the opening movement begins with a tango rhythm, the middle movement vivace isn't that far from his Fariations on a Theme by Frank Bridge, and the concluding Passacaglia, reflecting Britten's love of Baroque forms, is built on a melancholy, inward violin line underpinned by a repeated bass that begins in the trombones and wends its way toward an intense, grimly triumphant climax. I think much of this is great, haunting, neglected music. Jansen's reading and Jarvi's accompaniment break no new ground, but they make a much stronger impression than in the Beethoven, and although Jansen doesn't bring a powerful tone to the solo part, she is clearly committed.
In the end, I can't quite see that the audience for a period-flavored Beethoven concerto would overlap with the much smaller, more modernist audience for the Britten. If I am representative, the Britten is the highlight here, but I imagine I am not representative at all and most listeners won't get very far past the Beethoven.
P.S. Feb. 2010 -- In all fairness I should report that on returning to Viktoria Mullova's period-tinged account with John Eliot Gardiner, I didn't find much more vigor than Jansen provides; less in the finale, in fact. This made me like Mullova less rather than Jansen more, because insipid Beethoven makes no sense to me. Given that proviso, Jansen is highly competitive if HIP is the style you prefer."
Odd Beethoven and workable Britten
Prescott Cunningham Moore | 11/11/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)
"If this release were a movie, the casting director should have been fired. For our leading lady, Decca has chosen Janine Jansen, a fine violinist with a light touch and a tendency towards timidity. She plays opposite Paavo Jarvi - brash, aggressive, energetic, assertive. What results is a comedy of errors in all the most literal sense.
The Beethoven is essentially an unmitigated failure. Enter Jarvi, a dashing protagonist with his Breman players following in suit, fresh from their victorious Beethoven cycle on RCA. This historically informed bunch plays with little vibrato, big tone, and aggressive attacks in the tutti passages. Jarvi interjects with lively interpretive details (if not always found in the score) that are throughly logical and serve the music well. So all the more awkward is Jansen's entrance against this background of bravura, her measured, meek, and cautious scale smothered in vibrato completely at odds with Jarvi. What results over the ensuing thirty odd minutes is an awkward, uncomfortable dialogue between two performers with no chemistry and little common ground. Jarvi continues unabashedly forward with his big tone while Jansen uncomfortably darts about, often disappearing in the texture. Tension sags badly during the development of the first movement, not due to the tempo but because Janen's playing lacks the necessary color and character to shape this music effectively. When Jansen finally does decide to play with some energy, it is in the cadenzas, where her technique and tone become both more dazzling and self-assured. All in all, however, the performance is just embarrassing for performers of this caliber. In the notes, Jansen discusses her apprehension of playing with Jarvi and his Bremen players because she (rightly) notes her conception of the concerto is more romantic than Jarvi's obviously HIP ideas about Beethoven. Why no one at Decca took note of this most fundamental of problems is anyone's guess. She would have worked much better with a Kurt Masur, who plays the supporting role very well (just listen to how he indulges every one of Anne-Sophie Mutter's erratic and bizarre impulses in their "collaborative" performance of the Beethoven concerto), while Jarvi would have been better paired with a more aggressive violinist, like Nikolai Znaider or Julia Fischer, who recently signed with Decca.
The Britten goes somewhat better, if only because of its relative unfamiliarity, but Jansen's tendency towards meekness and timidity in the Beethoven becomes full-on intonation problems in this technically challenging work, most notably in the transition from the cadenza into the passacaglia proper. I have less of a problem with the coupling as others, considering both concertos begin with a basic rhythmic pulse that is carried throughout, but I do wonder how two highly skilled and professional musicians had such a massive and pervasive miscommunication in music both know well.
As much as I would like to blame Jarvi for refusing to work with Jansen's conception of the Beethoven, Decca must accept its part in this production. It seems likely that Decca wanted to capitalize on the success of Jarvi's cycle and simply placed him with Janens because of her contract with the label. Such a shame too, because I absolutely loved Jarvi's cycle and was greatly looking forward to this release.
Listeners wanting an interpretation along the lines of Jarvi's in the Beethoven have an embarrassment of riches, from Heifetz's reference Beethoven with Munch in Boston to Isabelle Faust's recent Prague performance with Jiri Belohlavek. Perlman/Giulini leans more towards the romantic end of the spectrum. But there are too many fine performances of this concerto with conductors and performers who are not approaching this work with diametrically opposed views of how the concerto should be played. As for the Britten, Daniel Hope delivers all the goods and then some paired with a fantastic (and more appropriate) coupling, the Berg concerto."
Care to know what I think?
Discophage | France | 01/28/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Ah - music. Why do we love it so much? First and foremost, because it is beautiful, and stirs in us those deep emotions that words cannot describe. And then, also, because it can't be "proven" - and yet we try.
These recordings by Janine Jansen, especially her Beethoven, have received strikingly contrasting reviews here, from reviewers who all seem knowledgeable and drive their points convincingly - and these reviews have given rise to heated disputes, with some contributors to the ensuing comments pointing out that Jansen's had been voted "the best" version (of Beethoven) by various magazines or panels of critics - as if that were a proof of its value and of the sceptics' misjudgement.
But whoever has some experience with the record magazines will know that such cleavages are customary, and one is often baffled by the seemingly irreconcilable views expressed by apparently equally knowledgeable critics, as if it were not the same interpretation they had heard.
Whenever I've been able to judge for myself, part of those divergences in appreciation derive in fact from differences of knowledge. One's hearing and appreciation are shaped by what we know. Aren't you irked when you read reviews calling a recording "the best ever" when obviously the reviewer has heard only two or three others? In my opinion and practice, only thorough comparative listening enables you to really establish the merits of a given recording. It is not only that knowing all those previous versions, including the "historicals", helps you establish what the new version has to say that hadn't been said before, or how well it says things already said; it also opens your ears and mind to the variety of interpretive approaches that a composition can occasion.
And that too is why opinions on music can be so irreconcilable. It is not just a matter of knowledge, it is also a matter of the kind of attitude that informs one's listening. When one knows very little, one may have very fixed ideas on how a piece should be played, but accrued knowledge can sometimes serve only to confirm and stiffen such expectations, so that equally knowledgeable people will violently disagree, only because their expectations of how it should be differ widely. Toscanini or Fürtwängler? Fast and fiery and relentless or broad and lyrical and flexible?
In my case hearing more has (I hope) been an ear and mind-opener. It has made me aware that interpretation isn't just a matter of being "right" or "wrong". There are different approaches to any given composition, irreconcilable maybe, but equally valid in their own right. None is more "right" or "wrong" than "blue" from "red", and there's no point in "ranking" them - but you can maybe rank shades of red and shades of blue.
These introductory lines were written before listening to this disc. I probably would not have bought if it hadn't been for the controversy here. I wanted to hear for myself. So, now, Jansen.
This is one of the most remarkable Beethoven Concertos I've heard. Järvi's conducting is the most intense and dramatic I've EVER heard, and that includes Harnoncourt's. In accordance with prevalent HIP custom, his tempos are swift - but no more than Harnoncourt's (and, in the finale, well within a norm established long ago by Szigeti-Walter) - and his rubato limited, but there is enough drama for them not to seem pressed. His trumpets blare like percussion, his timpanis pound (the opening timp sounds more like a call to battle than the soft ushering in we are used to), his woodwinds crisp, his accents always forceful. Yes, they do relate to sf and sfp written by Beethoven in the score, only he whips them up more than we are accustomed to hearing. But I will grant that I counted four, between 9:35 and 9:39 in the first movement, that are NOT from Beethoven. With his highly intense conducting, Järvi also unearths details that I saw in the score but never heard: in the first tutti at 1:17, horns play legato quarter note values but trumpets play snappy eighth-notes like the timp thuds: and for the first time I've heard it here.
Is that too dramatic and forceful for Beethoven's essentially lyrical Concerto? I can understand that some would find so. But I don't stick with the notion that Beethoven's VC is an "essentially lyrical" composition; like its composer, it is Janus-faced: heroic/dramatic AND lyrical. I love the raging energy brought to it by Järvi.
And Jansen? She is emphatically NOT the meek and demure fiddler that some of the previous reviews led me to expect. What she has to say she drives home with plenty of authority and fire, always beautiful tone, and a remarkable attention to Beethoven's minuscule details of articulation: try for instance her staccato playing between 11:12 and 11:36 in the first movement. I don't think I've ever heard such a precise rendition of what Beethoven wrote. And what's that thing with a purported contradiction between her use of vibrato and the orchestra's vibrato-less playing? When she uses it her vibrato is never obtrusive, and then - listen again, and tell me if, at 10:35 and again at 11:52 in the first movement, she is using vibrato? She's not, and there is no "contradiction".
Cons? Jansen's bowing in the Larghetto is a little too plump to convey the emotion of the best versions, and she's recorded from so close that you can hear her breath intakes - not in the score, these.
That this version can ruffle the feathers of listeners expecting a less forceful and dramatic view, evidently. But that Jansen-Järvi have something original, interesting and valid to say about the old warhorse, emphatically yes. Beethoven's VC has been graced with many excellent to outstanding versions since the first complete one in 1925 (trivia: whose?); this one belongs to the list.
Having reached Amazon's 1000-word limit, I'll post my review of the Britten under the disc's other entry (but grant me a few days).
"
Superb, refreshing Beethoven; fabulous Britten
Eric Van Ginkel | Los Angeles | 11/08/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Up until now there has been only one review of this album on this site. All I can say is that the reviewer who gave this CD 3 stars must have listened to a different performance. Rather than thin, the sound of the violin is full-bodied, poetic and nuanced. In a word, Janine Jansen's playing is superb, on a superbly beautiful instrument (a Strad), and very well recorded. There may be people who object to the close miking of the soloist that results in hearing the artist breathe, but for me it adds an attractive dimension of realism.
I am familiar with quite a few performances of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. Without hesitation, this is now my absolute favorite. What sets this performance by Janine Jansen (by the way, not just admired by her fellow Dutchmen, but a worldwide phenomenon) apart is the transparency, her outstanding technique and, above all, her gift to show you the line through the entire composition. I recommend this CD to all who want to explore a fresh approach to a well-known concerto.
I was not familiar with the Britten Violin Concerto, but after hearing Janine interpret it, I am surprised how neglected this piece has been over the years. Even though this composition obviously contrasts with the Beethoven, somehow the pairing of the two concerti works well.
Janine chose two different orchestras for these concerti. The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen is a chamber orchestra of outstanding quality. Although a relatively new ensemble, it has had very talented members from the very beginning, and outstanding conductors, including Daniel Harding (who conducted for Janine in the Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto and Souvenir d'un Lieu Cher with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra), and now Paavo Järvi, son of conductor Neeme Järvi. It is no coincidence that Janine chose the Bremen ensemble, as it has performed and recorded all the Beethoven Symphonies to much worldwide acclaim with the Ninth Symphony completing the cycle. (See Beethoven: Symphony No.9). It is also no coincidence that she chose a chamber orchestra over a full orchestra, as it follows Beethoven's original orchestration and, as in the Tchaikovsky album, adds greatly to the transparency of the performance.
For the Britten concerto, Janine chose the London Symphony, also with Paavo Järvi conducting. Obviously, this orchestra needs no introduction. Benjamin Britten conducted the London Symphony Orchestra many times, most famously in the performance of his War Requiem (See Britten - War Requiem / Vishnievskaya · Pears · Fischer-Dieskau · LSO · Britten). It is still the Britten Orchestra par excellence.
Janine Jansen is one of a number of remarkably talented young performers, but as far as I am concerned, she is at the very top of that list, combining interpretative and technical talent few violinists have been able to equal over the last century. Her body of work now includes a most unusual rendition of Vivaldi's Four Seasons (See Vivaldi: The Four Seasons - Janine Jansen), returning to the composer's original score; the Mendelssohn and Bruch concerti (See Janine Jansen: Concertos & Romance), the Tchaikovsky concerto and "souvenir" (See Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto). And now the Beethoven and Britten masterpieces. These are all five star performances, and this newest addition to her repertoire is no exception. Warmly recommended!
Track Listings (6) - Disc #1