Chausson; Suk; Respighi; Vaughan Williams - Poème (Julia Fischer)

Information

Composer: Ernest Chausson; Josef Suk; Ottorino Respighi; Ralph Vaughan Williams

• Respighi - Poema autunnale
• Suk - Fantasy, Op. 24
• Chausson - Poème, Op. 25
• Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending

Julia Fischer, violin

Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo

Yakov Kreizberg, conductor

Date: 2011

Label: Decca

https://www.deccaclassics.com/en/catalogue/products/poeme-fischer-7937

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Review

The experience of listening to Julia Fischer’s latest CD was tinged with sadness, cast as it was in the shadow of Yakov Kreizberg’s recent death. Still, thanks to the miracle of recording, the artistic potency of this symbiotic musical relationship transcends time…much as it will a hundred years hence when none of us will be here. Fischer likens Respighi’s Poema autunnale to film music, which is true enough (it’s also true of much else that Respighi composed), and this warmly expressed performance focuses its combination of drive and reverie. Chausson’s Poème thrives on the sort of fluent dialogue that Fischer and Kreizberg achieved as a matter of course and, although Fischer’s playing is charged with emotion, she’s placed in a sensible relation to the orchestra, balance-wise, which helps accentuate the subtlety and inward drama of Chausson’s dialogic writing. As to The Lark Ascending, my own taste favours a performance where the soloist is a first among equals (Hugh Bean and Boult – EMI – have long provided my benchmark), and although Fischer’s playing is often sublimely beautiful – the higher reaches of her tone, especially – I find her performance marginally, and only marginally, too “soloistic”. But to call this performance anything less than sensitive would be unfair.

Suk’s dashing, concerto-style Fantasy was recently recorded by Michael Ludwig with the Buffalo Philharmonic under JoAnn Falletta (Naxos). Fischer and Kreizberg are more comprehensively compelling – Kreizberg’s witty handling of the variations section really made me smile – but I was happy to see that Supraphon have reissued Josef Suk’s 1984 recording, originally coupled with his second (1978) version of Dvorák’s Violin Concerto which, if anything, is even more gripping than his first, but that now includes, in addition to the Concerto, the lovely Dvorák Romance in F minor and the rapturously beautiful first movement of Suk’s Fairy Tale, all featuring the Czech Philharmonic under the perceptive direction of Václav Neumann.

Summing up, in comparing the two versions of the Fantasy, I would say that Fischer’s tonally alluring, full-blooded performance sits perfectly within the context of an imaginatively chosen programme, while the passionate projection and razor-like “edge” of Suk’s playing bring out all the temperament and local colour that his grandfather (the composer Josef Suk) and great-grandfather (Dvorák) were famous for.

-- Rob Cowan, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2011/Oct11/Respighi_Poema_4782684.htm

https://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-16193/

https://www.allmusic.com/album/po%C3%A8me-mw0002132830

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/may/05/julia-fischer-poeme-review

https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2011/06/27/137455706/rapturous-poetry-and-an-unintended-elegy

https://www.amazon.com/Po%C3%A8me-Ernest-Chausson/dp/B004NA3M1W

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Julia Fischer (born 15 June 1983) is a German classical violinist and pianist. She began her violin education at the Leopold Mozart Conservatory in Augsburg, before admitting to the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts, where she worked with Ana Chumachenco. Fischer started her career early, giving concerts since she was 11 and teaching as a professor since 23. She has worked with many internationally acclaimed conductors and orchestras, and has performed in most European countries, the United States, Brazil and Japan. Her repertoire contains over 40 works with orchestra and about 60 works of chamber music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Fischer

https://www.juliafischer.com/

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