Empathetic Performances

Beethoven and Clement
violin concertos -
heard by the late
HOWARD SMITH

'... Barton-Pine's faultlessly sculpted performance is unequivocally persuasive ...'

Rachel Barton Pine - Beethoven and Clement Violin Concertos. © 2008 Cedille Records

Rachel Barton Pine joins the battalions of performers with a recording of Beethoven's matchless violin concerto to their name. She turns in a fairly standard reading revealing the purest tone imaginable and her own somewhat uneven if technically adroit cadenzas.

Unfortunately when set alongside the recent harmonia mundi version (2007) of Beethoven's Op 61, she falls well short of the spontaneity, freshness, and compelling individuality displayed by Isabelle Faust, the Prague Philharmonia and conductor Jiří Bělohlávek.

Setting aside Faust's superbly produced 2007 version (also including the Kreutzer Sonata), why choose Barton Pine when there's Yehudi Menuhin, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Wilhelm Furtwängler (1947, Testament); David Oistrach, the Stockholm Festival Orchestra and Sixten Ehrling (1954, Testament); Jascha Heifetz, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Charles Munch (1955, RCA); Fritz Kreisler, Berlin State Opera Orchestra and Leo Blech (1926, Naxos); Christian Tetzlaff, the Zurich Tonnhalle and David Zinman (2006, Arte Nova Classics ); or Monica Huggett, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Charles Mackerras (1992 Classics for Pleasure)?..