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Rachel Barton Pine brings much passion and finesse to her recent recording of Elgar’s distinctive violin concerto, Op. 61 and Bruch’s enduring violin concerto, Op. 26 – beautifully supported with all the details, coloration and flair one could ask for by the BBC Symphony under Andrew Litton (New York City Ballet’s music director).
After all, Pine is a fearless artist who offers consistently cutting edge performances of highest musical and technical quality and this is another example. Fritz Kreisler premiered Elgar’s Op. 61 in 1910 and Joseph Joachim gave the revised debut of Bruch’s Op. 26 in 1868, with both these famed violinists offering their input. Pine is no stranger to romantic repertoire, but seems to display a special affinity for these influential works, drawing out a personalized interpretation that goes right to the emotional core.
Pine’s approach will satisfy both sommelier and music aficionado because she draws out a full bodied cabernet kinda sound with hints of sparkling passagework and spot on double stops. Her concept transforms the mysterious opening and Adagio of Bruch’s concerto into a tone poem filled with dramatic energy that gives this much played work a rather organic raison d’etre.
Of course, Pine’s 1742 Joseph Guarnerius del Gesu Ex-Bazzini also helps project Elgar’s concerto, a work certainly stylistically different than the Trio of his Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 – the so-called graduation march as it’s often played at commencements – and his cello concerto.
Each movement of Elgar’s Op. 61 presents a unique mixture of quicksilver moods and tonalities, from hymn-like serenity to gushing, eccentric sequences that evoke a musical art deco effect. It’s also an endurance work as there is plenty of fingerboard gymnastics like perpetual motion scale passages, spitfire slides and trills which Pine tosses off with great intensity, flowing vibrato and cascades of nuances – particularly in the Andante and Allegro molto – a concerto unto its own.