Matt Haimovitz's earlier DG recordings—Bruch, Lalo and Saint-Saens (6/89), C. P. E. Bach, Haydn and Boccherini (4/90)—were acclaimed for their interpretative spontaneity, though reservations were expressed about his bowing technique. This new disc confirms the spontaneity, and the works included make very different technical demands from those of earlier repertories. It all adds up to a powerful projection of a worthwhile programme, even though some doubts about Haimovitz's view of the music remain.
He earns gratitude for providing the first recordings of the sonatas by Ligeti and Crumb. Both are early works, and atypical of their composers' more familiar later music, but they are full of character and admirably put together. There are hints of Bartok in each, but these serve positive ends, stimulating the composers' own ideas, which flow naturally and economically.
The Reger Suite is also, for that composer, concise and full of inventiveness, playing with imitations of Bach that soon transmute into a style that suggests not so much 'Bach goes to town' as 'Bach goes to Bayreuth'. The slow movement is particularly effective, able to stand up to Haimovitz's hyper-expressive reading—a hyperexpressiveness that might be hard to take were his technique here not so polished and assured.
The crucial question is whether all these works might benefit from a less highly-wrought manner—from more light and shade, more restraint to complement the urgency. I certainly felt so in the Britten, where Haimovitz deploys a degree of elegant ferocity and vibrant flexibility that not even Rostropovich could outdo. It is all very physical—palpably so in a state-of-the-art recording. But Britten's music thrives on its very austerity, and it is this discipline that seems in short supply in this performance.'