Elizabeth Wallfisch, The Parley of Instruments, Peter Holman - English Classical Violin Concertos (1996)

The intervening dozen years since I reviewed Hyperion’s initial release of four English Violin Concertos (66865, 20:2) may not have witnessed a surge of interest in these works; nevertheless, the panache that Elizabeth Wallfisch brought to them in her recording sessions in January 1996 has hardly paled with the passage of time. These violinist-composers, contemporaries of Viotti and Mozart, wrote in an Italianate style, with woodwind splashes (all four concertos include oboes and horns, and Linley’s adds flutes as well) that enhance the kind of concertante symphonic sound which Paul Stoeving noted in Viotti’s concertos. The editions William Davies and Peter Holman prepared for the recording omit violas from the concertino when it accompanies the soloist, incidentally strengthening the contrast with the heavier, woodwind-laden tuttis that alternately gallop in hunting style and provide a blanket into which to tuck the harmonies. James Brooks’s Concerto may not showcase the same virtuosic technique as does Thomas Linley’s, but its more straightforward vigor and the brightness of its orchestral writing lend it an interest of its own. Linley inherited Tartini’s technique through Pietro Nardini—and apparently added to that substratum highly effective technical effects of his own. Shaw based his slow movement on an ethnic tune replete with Scotch snaps and melodic ornaments. The second of Samuel Wesley’s eight violin concertos appeared when he had reached only the age of 15 (two years after his first). He must have been a precocious violinist (to say nothing of his abilities as a composer) if he actually played the piece himself, which he presumably did.

Wallfisch, Holman, and the orchestra give these pieces sparkling, light-hearted readings, unlike dark or soggy ones that A=430 might suggest. Wallfisch plays an edgy but bright-sounding modern Guarneri-style violin made by Ekkard Seidl in 1995 (only a year before the recording), evincing a winning stylistic congeniality and a delight in the works’ showy technical passages that seem, as mentioned at the outset, even more impressive after the lapse of the dozen years since the recording’s original issue. The recorded sound still seems buoyant and three-dimensional. And still, then, highly recommended. -- Robert Maxham