Fruits of special partnerships

By WILLIAM DART


Anne-Sophie Mutter and Andre Previn continue to celebrate their partnership in and out of the studio and concert hall with a new recording of Tchaikovsky and Korngold Violin Concertos.

The self-indulgences that Mutter allowed herself with Beethoven a few years back are more appropriate in an edge-of-the-seat live performance of the Tchaikovsky with the Vienna Philharmonic. She may take liberties with the phrasing, allowing herself perhaps just one sighing portamento too many; and in the Canzonetta, Slavic intensity may come dangerously close to gypsy rhapsody.

But there is also vitality, the sort of grain and sinew that lends fresh life to a masterpiece that has the misfortune to be too well known.

The Korngold Concerto is the ultimate dessert treat. Think of a Viennese pastry, topped with cream, after it's been injected with a few thousand extra calories and you've got the idea.

Completed by the Hollywood Kapellmeister in 1945, and championed by the Jascha Heifetz, this is quite possibly the last great romantic concerto.

Mutter has judged every shudder and swoop to perfection and conductor Previn shows the sort of flair you can only pick up from decades of work in the MGM and other studios 50 years ago.

But there are no scratchy studio orchestras to deal with this time, thanks to the London Symphony Orchestra, sumptuously recorded in the legendary Abbey Road Studios.

It's best that you listen before you look with Hilary Hahn's new CD of the Elgar Concerto, lest the modish photographs of the American violinist and her fey poem colour your judgment for the worst.

They shouldn't because this is a deeply considered rendition of a fine concerto. For Sir Colin Davis, this is further proof, following his recent live CDs with the LSO, that he is an Elgarian par excellence and Hahn is quite simply terrific.

Unlike the vibrant, sometimes over-emotional Mutter, Hahn opts for the linear, beautifully articulated and immaculately in tune. The undying lyricism of Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, a piece of ineffable sadness, is the perfect partner and further showcases this special collaboration between violinist and conductor.

* Anne-Sophie Mutter, Violin Concertos (Deutsche Grammophon 474 5152)

Hilary Hahn, Elgar Violin Concerto (Deutsche Grammophon 474 5042)