Benjamin Britten; Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Violin Concertos (Vilde Frang)

Information

Composer: Benjamin Britten; Erich Wolfgang Korngold

• Korngold - Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35
• Britten - Violin Concerto, Op. 15

Vilde Frang, violin

Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra

James Gaffigan, conductor

Date: 2016

Label: Warner

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Review

In the booklet notes to this release, the Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang describes Britten’s Violin Concerto as ‘one of the greatest dramas in the violin repertoire’, and that’s certainly how she approaches it. Though she imbues it with searing passion, the expression never seems exaggerated. She reveals the work’s purposeful, steely form yet produces sounds that are as beguiling as her technique is astonishing.

Both she and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra under James Gaffigan (see Session Report, April 2016) have the measure of the first movement’s unhurried but insidious ostinato. The macabre touches to the second movement are keenly underlined, and by the time we get to the end of the final Passacaglia, those clashing semitones leave us utterly wrung out. Frang also makes perfect sense of the work’s sometimes overwrought connections to Romantic violin concerto archetypes. There has been no shortage of champions of this work in recent years but this surely deserves a place at the top of the list.

Frang’s view of the Korngold Concerto is no less persuasive. She may not choose the fatness of sound that others have traditionally opted for but she brings an effortless lyricism and an unreal, shining sweetness of tone, no matter how high she soars. Gaffigan and the Frankfurt orchestra are ideal partners; coupled with a beautifully balanced recording, this all makes for a highly covetable disc.

— Edward Bhesania

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Benjamin Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was a leading British composer, pianist and conductor. Trained at the Royal College of Music, he gained early acclaim with Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge and achieved international prominence with the opera Peter Grimes (1945). His major stage works include Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice, alongside innovative church parables such as Curlew River. Co-founder of the Aldeburgh Festival, he also composed celebrated song cycles, choral works including the War Requiem, and notable orchestral and chamber music.

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Erich Wolfgang Korngold (May 29, 1897 – November 29, 1957) was an Austrian-born composer and child prodigy, hailed as a genius in early 20th-century classical music. He gained early fame for his operas, particularly Die tote Stadt (1920), before fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria in the 1930s. In Hollywood, Korngold became a pioneer of film music, composing lush, romantic scores for films like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), which won him an Academy Award. He wrote scores for 16 Hollywood films in all, and is considered one of the founders of film music, along with Max Steiner and Alfred Newman.

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Vilde Frang (born 19 August 1986) is a Norwegian classical violinist. Born in Oslo, she studied at Barratt Due Musikkinstitutt, with Kolja Blacher at Musikhochschule Hamburg, and with Ana Chumachenco at the Kronberg Academy. In 2012 she was awarded the Credit Suisse Young Artists Award which led to her acclaimed debut with the Vienna Philharmonic under Bernard Haitink at the Lucerne Festival. Frang is an exclusive Warner Classics artist and her recordings have received numerous awards, such as the Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d'Or and Gramophone Award. She plays the 1734 "Rode" Guarnerius.

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