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Elgar: Violin Concerto / Lark Ascending | 
 enlarge | Creators: Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra, Hilary Hahn
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Category: Music
List Price: $16.98
Buy New: $9.94
You Save: $7.04 (41%)
New (32) Used (7) from $8.79
Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 59072
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 5 x 0.4
MPN: 000302602
UPC: 028947450429
EAN: 0028947450429
ASIN: B0002CX4Q8
Release Date: September 28, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | 1. Allegro | | • | 2. Andante | | • | 3. Allegro molto |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
This is an oddly cool performance of one of the most overtly sentimental--indeed, gushing--pieces in the violin repertoire. In an effort simply to present, rather than interpret, the music, Hahn seems to have gone overboard--she plays with little portamento and vibrato, she keeps away from the music's soul. All that having been said, the playing itself is faultless, her tone lovely, and by the last movement her virtuosity is truly impressive. The classic performance remains Menuhin's, but Hahn and Davis and his LSO have much to offer here. Vaughan Williams' gorgeous-if-sappy "The Lark Ascending" is played ravishingly, with more overt feeling than the Elgar, and again the LSO add greatly to the pleasure with the woodwind section--and clarinet in particular--shining brightly. --Robert Levine
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| Customer Reviews:
 Looking closer March 9, 2008
B. Tupper (Ramona, CA United States)
Reading through the many reviews of this recording submitted over the past months, I can't help wonder if all the writers were listening to the same release: The best... The worst... Ravishing... Flat... and on and on. I bought a full orchestral score and redd through the recording a number of times to try to sort it all out.
Stepping back for a fresh look at the whole thing:
This concerto by Elgar is one of the most emotionally intense compositions of the 20th century. At a time when many composers were churning out academic experiments in arhythmia and atonality, Elgar poured out his cold, sterile English heart into a passionate melodic outburst that reaches both back into pre-Renaissance English folk forms and forward into post-modern sensibilities. Any accurate and complete description must take into account both the emotional fluidity and the formal structure. We don't have space or time here for the formal structure--just a few words on the emotional.
The dynamic and tempo changes written into the score are almost dizzying. For example, in one section I read more than 80 changes within the space of about 30 bars--terms like espressivo, grazioso, animato, lento, appassionato, con fuoco, ritardando molto pile almost on top of each other--poco marcato, poco largando, a tempo, cantabile in three adjacent bars--markings such as dolcissimo and espressivo in the same measure followed closely by animato; a tempo con pasione followed closely by maestoso and strepitoso--often with different sections of the orchestra going in different expressive directions at the same time, and quite apart from the markings for the solo. Such as ad lib. or tenudo or espressivo appears frequently in the solo line even where the orchestra is marked a tempo.
In such a musical environment it would be easy to get carried away into emotional gushing. Hilary handles this with admirable and elegant restraint. She has obviously thought this piece through and decided what she wants to do with it, as a coherent whole, and she arrived at conclusions quite different from some other artists. That is her artistic prerogative. And she carries it off very well. Others may come to different conclusions. That is their artistic prerogative, both as performers and listeners, but a piece of music as complex and intense and varied as this can survive more than one interpretive approach.
Giving Yehudi his due (I knew him personally and admired his work back in the 50s), I also admire Hilary for her interpretation here--not the less for her technical excellence. It wouldn't hurt for anyone to own both versions and to go back and forth between them, relishing their differences.
Above all, please don't scorn those who refuse to climb into your own narrow little musical box.
While I also appreciate the quite different interpretations offered by some artists, I am sorry I can't give this particular recording at least seven or eight stars.
If not the best, on the same level at least December 23, 2007
Daniel Graser (Wappingers Falls, New York United States)
The buzz around this recording, that being it is an unusually cold performance of this epic romantic concerto, is somewhat true. However, for me this is an ideal interpretation. Simply because, in overwraught, gushingly emotional performances of this concerto the listener stops feeling all the performer is giving simply due to the sheer length of this work, close to 50 minutes. Ms. Hahn makes the work sing and emote in a much more Apollonian way and her light touch makes the work seem so effortless which is something quite difficult in music like this. I will listen to this right next to Menuhin and Perlman, she definitely is on their level and to me in many ways surpasses them. However, as one reviewer has already noted, the true gem here is the Vaughan Williams. For me there is no comparison, this is the best recording I have ever heard. Here Hahn is sensitive to every gesture, every dymamic, and every color in the orchestra behind her. She captures the spirit of the piece and sounds great doing it. The interesting part of this recording is not Hahn, she always plays brilliantly musically. What I was most surprised about is the fantastic accompaniment from Davis and the LSO. While I don't have a bad word to say about the man, it is often the case with me that his recordings are great, solid, and musically very well put, but they are rarely anything particularly special. This is a special recording in every way. Not only does Davis keep up with Hahn and stay musically in tune with her, he makes her sound better as well. Along with some fantastic solo playing from the orchestra, especially clarinet in the Vaughan Williams, absolutely stunning, these pieces become spellbinding.
A Revelation October 6, 2007
C.H. Wise (Central New York)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am a long time admirer of Elgar's music but have always had trouble getting into this piece, that is until hearing the present performance. Hahn and Davis have managed to cut through the density of late Romantic performance practice to bring something new and quite valid to the piece. Just as Boulez "burned through the haze" in his Debussy performances, Hahn and Davis have done so for this piece and have revealed what I had been missing for so long: the vitality inherent in the writing. By comparison, other performances I had tried to live with were like an overstuffed chair, luxuriant but overly comfortable. The recording has wonderful sound and presence. I don't know if it's DG's recording or Davis' direction but it is possible to follow the complexities of Elgar's writing and to appreciate his consummate craftsmanship as a composer. The accompanying "A Lark Ascending" has to be the best rendition since Hugh Bean and Sir Adrian Boult tackled the piece on EMI. It's surely not a masterwork but it is a delightful tone picture of the type that RVW was so justly famed for. In all, this disc is a wonderful addition to Ms. Hahn's discography.
This one bowled me over! May 11, 2007
Patrick W. Crabtree (Lucasville, OH USA)
I bought this CD to get the Ralph Vaughn Williams piece and, had I been paying attention and seen that the remainder was Elgar, I would not have bought it -- I've never been much of an Elgar fan as I've always found his compositions to be a bit stiff. BUT, boy did I ever change my mind when I heard this! The Elgar Concerto was unlike anything I've ever heard of his before, perhaps even paralleling the superb ambiance of some Hovhaness that I've heard lately.
This is one of those classical CDs on which every track is a pure treasure. Now, I've come to enjoy the Elgar Concerto as much as I do the Vaughn Williams. I savor this music as wallpaper while reading and for that it is perfect. All tracks also make for the VERY BEST dinner music. I play it over and over.
Regarding Hahn's performance, yes, I think at times she might be just a tad light on the strings but I found her rendition, in terms of delivery, to be quite fluid and otherwise flawless. And here's the thing.... perhaps the sheet music reflects one f where I happen to think that there should be two. But I'm neither the composer nor the conductor. So maybe she played it exactly correct. I don't know -- I can't read the first note of sheet music but I know what I heard and I liked it a lot! And, uncultured Redneck that I am, after gawking at that cover photo for quite a long time, it's undoubtedly an understatement to say that I'd really love to meet Hilary Hahn in person *.*
So, I'm up to about 400 classical CDs now and this one is in the top 20 for me. I think that the sound quality is above average and the orchestra is tight, yet atmospheric as well. No one will get hurt by buying this CD -- it's musical gold as far as I'm concerned.
 Hahn's freshness is nice, but she's not deeply committed to Elgar's world February 6, 2007
Santa Fe listener
Given the semi-sacred status of the Elgar Violin Concerto in England, it was bracing to read this comment from a reviewer here: "Elgar's violin concerto seems most of the time to be a great introduction and a great cadenza bookending some rather unremarkable music." We Americans are likely to feel that way about Elgar's extremely loquacious, loftily earnest music. Hilary Hahn is out to change our minds, I suppose, with her "interpretation free" recording. It's light and sparkling when it can be, abetted by Colin Davis's fluid orchestral support.
At his website David Hurwitz gave this CD a 10 out of 10, so I was prepared for it to be dreadful. In fact, it's pleasant but uneventful. Like him or not, Elgar demands that a performer fall in line with as much seriousness as possible, and the greatest recordings, by the yooung Menuhin and Nigel Kennedy, enter the cathedral with reverence and angst, heartfelt sentiment and dignity. Hahn is a tourist in this country. As execution goes, she's perfectly fine, but execution is never enough. I applaud her good intentions in sprucing up a presumably musty work, but in the end the Elgar concerto probably needs its thick varnish and aged patina.
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