Haydn: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 4 - Stravinsky: Divertimento

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For both classical musicians and classical musicians, it’s pretty hard to think of an upside to the past period of Covid-themed havoc. However if there is one positive thing that this terrible period will have bequeathed to us for posterity, it’s the number of superb recordings that would never have happened without all those sudden gaps in previously packed performance diaries, and with this harmonious pairing of Haydn and Stravinsky we have yet another.

For those with an eye on the strings world, fast-rising Dutch violinist Rosanne Philippens is unlikely to be a new name. Not least thanks to her five previous albums for Channel Classics. However The Vondel Strings will be, because this is a brand new ensemble – comprised of fourteen top Dutch string players and harpsichordist David Jansen (brother of violinist Janine Jansen) – that Philippens had been dreaming of forming for years, before empty corona diaries provided the moment. As for its name, this references the fact that many of the ensemble’s musicians are former pupils of Coosje Wijzenbeek and Vera Beths – because ‘The Vondel’ is the name by which the house on Amsterdam’s Vondelstraat, where Beths has for many years lived and taught, has become known.

On to the repertoire, and opening and closing the programme are Haydn’s Violin Concertos in D major and C major, with their bright, occasionally quirky classical elegance. Directed from the violin by Philippens, the Vondel Strings play with joyous warmth and nimbleness, precise articulation and neatly clipped phrasing, complementing Philippens’s own slender-toned combination of flowing grace and earthy pep; and while the author of the idiomatic yet engagingly creative cadenzas isn’t named, one assumes they’re Philippens’s own. Also worth pointing out is that the C major’s crowd-pleasing central Adagio here is a beauty. First, for the ensemble warmth of its initial rising tutti phrase’s gradual flowering, and for the silky smoothness of Philippens’s own long, slowly ascending line. Then, for the gentle intimacy of the interplay between Philippens’s and Jansen’s subsequent duet, as he winds his countermelody around her own poetry.

Then, to complement that Classical fare, the four-movement suite Stravinsky crafted from his exquisite Neo-Classical ballet of 1928, Le Baiser de la fée (The Fairy’s Kiss), in a gracefully sparkling new arrangement for violin and strings by James Ledger. To this, Philippens and the ensemble bring translucent textures, and deftly organic and colourful handling of the music’s sudden textural, timbral and dynamic contrasts. For a highlight, head to the Danses Suisses, which channels the ensemble precision and earthy pep heard already in the Haydn into some fabulously sharply defined rhythmic bounce, with an invigorating folk kick to its timbres.

Philippens writes in the sleeve notes that it was to record this specific Haydn and Stravinsky repertoire that she wanted to form an ensemble to play and direct in the first place. I hope, though, that this won’t be the last we hear from them. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz