KLAMI; ENGLUND Violin Concertos

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Uuno (Kalervo) Klami, (Sven) Einar Englund

Genre:

Orchestral

Label: Ondine

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 57

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: ODE1278-2

ODE1278-2. KLAMI; ENGLUND Violin Concertos

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (Sven) Einar Englund, Composer
(Sven) Einar Englund, Composer
Benjamin Schmid, Violin
Johannes Gustavsson, Conductor
Oulu Symphony Orchestra
The Finnish violin concerto after Sibelius: Erkki Melartin’s looked like a winner but sank; Aarre Merikanto wrote four but the best of them was never performed in his lifetime. Did the neoclassicists Uuno Klami and Einar Englund fare any better?

Englund’s 1981 Concerto can be considered neoclassical in some aspects of design, including its use of an austere pitch motif right from the off. It has some of Prokofiev’s menace and phrase shapes that nod to Shostakovich, but there’s Romanticism in the tortured slow movement and in the lyricism that counters all the finale’s spikes. Not a lost masterpiece but a sturdy work with individual touches.

Klami’s Concerto, born in 1943 but revised in 1954, has a degree more individuality. Still, don’t expect the imposing edifices of Klami’s Kalevala Suite; the concerto has that work’s ruggedness but is otherwise far more changeable, kooky and transparent. The first movement skips through a cavalcade of characterful episodes towards its conclusion and the slow movement has passages of Ariel-like shape-shifting, while the finale surfs waves of freewheeling joy à la Martin≤ (though some of the cyclic patterning loses its way).

The piece is also lighter in orchestration than Englund’s, which suits Benjamin Schmid better. He seems fully engaged with all the notes in both pieces and slips brilliantly from light, vibrato-less playing to tender lyricism. His double-stopping – even at the octave in Klami’s slow movement – is impressive. But his attractive, tender sound is also contained. That can be frustrating in the heavier Englund Concerto, especially given his position in the sound picture as a first among equals rather than as a galvanising individual.

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