Sibelius & Rautavaara: Violin Concertos

Album review

The connections between Jean Sibelius and Einojuhani Rautavaara are manifest: the elderly Sibelius championed the music of the younger Finn, and musical connections are rampant once you start listening for them. These two violin concertos, amazing as it may seem, have apparently never before been recorded together, and the Rautavaara concerto, from the 1970s, is not at all a common item. This speaks well for the young German virtuoso Tobias Feldmann, for whom this album marks an orchestral debut: he could easily have chosen common repertory works instead. And he nails the difficult Rautavaara, with its cadenza-like opening movement and passagework-filled, perhaps Bach-influenced finale. The Sibelius, with the broad dynamics and loose formal construction of its opening movement, makes an ideal pairing with Rautavaara's work, and Feldmann has the requisite star quality for it. If there's any complaint, it's that conductor Jean-Jacques Kantorow and the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège falter a bit in the Sibelius finale's syncopations, but Feldmann is right there to pick up the energy. Also worthy of kudos is the Alpha engineering team, which makes the most of the orchestra's home base, the Salle Philharmonique de Liège, and provides an almost tactile sense of contrast between Feldmann's flashy leaps and the massed string sounds of the Rautavaara. A superb debut, and one that should be in the library of anyone who loves Sibelius, Rautavaara, or both.

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