Musical priorities here are the Viennese Rhapsody Fantasietta and Cavatina, both original compositions and strongly reminiscent of the lush harmonic world that nowadays we more readily associate with the works of Korngold. I was also very taken with Cyril Scott’s haunting Lotus land, presented in Kreisler’s marvellous transcription. Ulrike-Anima Mathe’s performance is smoky and controlled: her small, rather monochrome tone and seamless bowing are gainfully employed and the recording – one of the finest I’ve ever heard of a violin with piano – captures the full range of Samuel Sanders’s subtly coloured accompaniment.
As for the rest, I am at a loss as how to ‘place’ this disc in relation to those by Kreisler himself. Like Joshua Bell, whose Decca Kreisler recital I reviewed last April, Mathe views these tasty morsels with an eye on the calories, though I suspect that Bell – being a pupil of that master Kreislerian Joseph Gingold – has the sweeter tooth. Technically, Mathe leaves nothing to be desired: her intonation is true, her left hand extremely agile and she sends countless felicitous phrases tripping off the bow. The main problem, I fear, is that the ‘sweetness’ sounds artificial, even a touch patronizing, and that the tone itself is, for all its finesse and well-graded dynamics, lacking in colour. Kreisler’s miniatures require colour, gentility, warmth, elegance and the sort of unstinting sincerity that you can only really identify when you hear it.
Ulrike-Anima Mathe is a superb player and a sophisticated interpreter, but in this instance her talents seem misdirected. Odd to relate, this is the second ‘short pieces’ CD to have come my way where the accompaniments are, in some respects, more imaginative than the violin top line (the other features Gil Shaham and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra on DG – reviewed in March). Listen to Samuel Sanders, and you hear someone who really is at home with the morceau genre. Might he be persuaded to prepare a solo album – music by Ignace Friedman perhaps, or Leopold Godowsky?'