This time the female violinists seem to have taken over (same story recently for the Bach Solo Sonatas).
We started off with the opening bars being played at a nice flowing tempo: it was the Prague Philharmonia conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek,
the soloist, Isabelle Faust hadn't entered yet, but it sounded very vital and alive.
Other versions which sounded good were
- Viktoria Mullova with the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique under John Eliot Gardiner on Philips
- Janine Jansen with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi on DG.
- Patricia Kopatchinskaja with the Champs-Elysees Orchestra under Philippe Herreweghe on Naïve
Roy Goodman was unhappy with all of the slow movements, partly for being too slow. He also seemed very keen on the version with Christian Tetzlaff and the Tonhalle O of Zurich under David Zinman
but it's not currently available, so not eligible for BAL.
Beethoven wrote an arrangement of the Violin Concerto as a Piano Concerto which is a useful source of information for players and includes cadenzas, but as these are intended for the piano they are not playable on the violin. It used to be the standard practice to play the cadenzas Fritz Kreisler wrote for the concerto and this is what Jansen does, while Faust plays an arrangement of Beethoven's piano cadenza, which is now the most common option. Daringly, Kopatchinskaja uses multi-tracking to play every note of Beethoven's piano cadenza on her violin, a somewhat weird option which Goodman and McGregor felt ruled her out of court.
The final three were Kopatchinskaja, Jansen and Faust, with Faust the final choice.
Personally I was enthralled by the fantasy in Kopatchinskaja's playing, so hers is the version I will be buying. I have great admiration for Faust too (and Mullova and Jansen) so I may well buy hers too!
