Search - Jean Sibelius, Thomas Dausgaard, Christian Tetzlaff :: Sibelius: The Complete Works for Violin; Christian Tetzlaff

Tetzlaff is supreme, even if the whole performance isn't

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 01/16/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"To hear Christian Tetzlaff live is to be mesmerized--his ability to color the violin's tone is unmatched today. Perfect intonation, total control over bowing, and amazing sensitivity in phrasing are hallmarks of his style. Here he gives us all that and more; no one since Vengerov in recent memory plays the solo part with such hypnotic concentration, but Tetzlaff's style is more restrained and lyrical than his great Russian counterpart. Like Joshua Bell, he is poetic and never plays an ugly note, but Tetzlaff is less precious and self-conscious than Bell can be.



I wish he had had a better conductor than Dausgaard, who gives a straightforward, robust account of the orchestral part without finding any insights on the order of his soloist's. Salonen and Cho-Lin make a better team on Sony, as do Mullova and Ozawa on Philips. But Tetzlaff is too great an artist to pass by; I'd rank this reading along with Gidon Kremer's on budget EMI, where Muti is also dull in the accompaniment.



The rest of this generous CD is filled out with incidental pieces that Sibelius (a failed professional violinist as a young man) wrote for violini and orchestra. Each is pleasant, a few are memorable, but Tetzlaff is the whole show, really"

A Leaner, Meaner, Thoughtful Sibelius

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 02/24/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I'm amazed at how well I know the Sibelius Violin Concerto in D-minor. I'm not a fiddler, but I could grunt along with the violin, a la Glenn Gould but with better tuning. And yet I'm sure I haven't heard the piece in twenty years or more. It used to be supremely popular, but its star has dimmed, probably because it has been perceived as too schmaltzy and lightweight. I bought this CD for the violin, not the composer; Christian Tetzlaff, among all the current corps of fiddlers, sounds to my ears like a total musician instead of a mere violinist. And he has surprised me with a Sibelius of more depth and craft than I remembered.



There's enough romantic yearning in the themes of the violin concerto without much 'excess' from the soloist. Tetzlaff plays his part with a 'lean' intensity that accentuates its melodic development, and with a 'mean' attention to tuning, especially of the double-stopped passages, eschewing the tuneless vibrato of fiddlers of the mid-20th C. He is, in other words, playing to the aesthetic of OUR generation rather than Sibelius's own, an aesthetic that values insight over affect. The Danish National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Dausgaard, complements Tetzlaff perfectly. Clearly they are 'on the same page' of insight. This concerto can easily sound like a batch of cadenzas bumptiously interrupted by orchestral burps and growls. In this performance, however, the orchestra reveals its inner thoughts, its inner voices, and wraps those musical ideas around the violin in a rich conceptual structure. That 'thoughtful' Sibelius prevails throughout the first two movements. Then, in the concluding allegro, the folklorish Sibelius takes over, and Tetzlaff gives us a fiddle timbre that sounds like all the harsh fun of a Baltic frolic.



None of Sibleius's other compositions for violin and orchestra have quite the memorability of his Opus 47 Concerto in D-minor. Tetzlaff and Dausgaard perform them as delightful serenades and witty diversions. I don't know any of them well enough to compare this to other performances. Based just on what I hear, it seems to me that Tetzlaff's prime strength here is his ability to play quite softly with great intensity, and quite grandly without losing touch with his softer expressiveness. But he can also toss off flights of 32nd notes as deftly and accurately as anyone could wish.



Next up for me: Tetzlaff and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes performing the Bartok Violin Sonatas! I can hardly wait!"