(The) Günter Wand Edition - Saint-Saëns Violin Concerto No 3
More from Wand’s middle period reveals a French surprise
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Profil
Magazine Review Date: 2/2006
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 77
Mastering:
Stereo
Catalogue Number: PH05006
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Serenade No. 9, "Posthorn" |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer
Günter Wand, Conductor North German Radio Symphony Orchestra Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer |
Concerto for Flute and Orchestra No. 1 |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer
Günter Wand, Conductor North German Radio Symphony Orchestra Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer Wolfgang Ritter, Flute |
Serenade No. 6, "Serenata notturna" |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer
Günter Wand, Conductor North German Radio Symphony Orchestra Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer |
Composer or Director: Camille Saint-Saëns, Hector Berlioz, Luigi (Carlo Zanobi Salvadore Maria) Cherubini, Charles (Louis Eugène) Koechlin
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Profil
Magazine Review Date: 2/2006
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 63
Mastering:
Stereo
Catalogue Number: PH05007
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 3 |
Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer
Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer Günter Wand, Conductor Ruggiero Ricci, Violin West German Radio Symphony Orchestra |
Bandar-Log |
Charles (Louis Eugène) Koechlin, Composer
Charles (Louis Eugène) Koechlin, Composer Günter Wand, Conductor West German Radio Symphony Orchestra |
(Le) carnaval romain |
Hector Berlioz, Composer
Günter Wand, Conductor Hector Berlioz, Composer West German Radio Symphony Orchestra |
Anacréon |
Luigi (Carlo Zanobi Salvadore Maria) Cherubini, Composer
Günter Wand, Conductor Luigi (Carlo Zanobi Salvadore Maria) Cherubini, Composer West German Radio Symphony Orchestra |
Composer or Director: Ludwig van Beethoven
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Profil
Magazine Review Date: 2/2006
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 56
Mastering:
Stereo
ADD
Catalogue Number: PH04052
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 5, 'Emperor' |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra Emil Gilels, Piano Günter Wand, Conductor Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer |
Coriolan |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra Günter Wand, Conductor Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer |
Fidelio, Movement: Overture |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra Günter Wand, Conductor Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer |
Author: Peter Quantrill
The Berlioz and Cherubini overtures are thrilling, hard-edged and drily recorded, unlike the Saint-Saëns, which is the dud of the set. The swimmy acoustic does Ruggiero Ricci’s intonation no favours and his bow hand makes heavy weather of music he could generally be relied upon to throw off with élan.
The French disc credits the WDR Symphony Orchestra; based as this is in Cologne, I am at a loss to know whether it is the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra under a different name. Certainly neither ensemble is distinguished by its wind playing (something of an Achilles heel in Wand’s recordings) on these discs.
Wind intonation never quite settles in the Emperor Concerto after a raucous opening tutti, and it doesn’t help that Gilels’s piano isn’t quite in tune with itself or the orchestra, especially in the upper couple of octaves. Still, the performance is an accomplished one. Imperial connotations are cast off in favour of a full and clear sense of the developing dialogue between soloist and orchestra – far beyond anything Mozart had attempted in this direction. So much is made of the Scotch-snap rhythm in the outer movements that one wonders whether Beethoven really did write the work a full year before embarking on his folksong arrangements for George Thomson.
Turn to Gilels and Ludwig on Testament, however, and you get not only fewer finger-slips but much more of a sense of the Concerto in the round – powerful and poetic, what Stephen Plaistow noted in Gilels’s playing as ‘the balance of the decorative and the dramatic understood’. The overture fill-ups lack the proto-authenticist zeal that marks Wand’s Gürzenich Beethoven recordings on Testament but they do not compensate with quite the sure-footed drama of his later NDR recordings.
The best playing is to be found on the Mozart disc, but in the Posthorn Serenade Wand and ‘his’ Hamburg orchestra face stiff competition from their later selves in a recording made in April 2001, less than a year before the conductor’s death. In both, the balancing of the orchestra seems key to the success of what Wand does with the piece, which is to demand attention to its details without trying to overlay it with spurious profundity. Wolfgang Ritter is a graceful flute soloist but cannot counteract Wand’s unusually heavy hand on the tiller: the little D major Serenade is much better, and fairly bounces along. There is, I suspect, much better to come in the remaining volumes.
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