Composer: Aram Khatchaturian
Performer: Antje Weithaas
Orchestra: Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie
Conductor: Daniel Raiskind
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: CPO
Catalogue: 555093-2
Release: 2019
Size: 410 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Violin Concerto in D minor
01. I. Allegro con fermezza
02. II. Andante sostenuto
03. III. Allegro vivace
04. Concerto Rhapsody for Violin & Orchestra
In the 1960s Aram Khachaturian engaged in a number of experiments in which he covered terrain situated at an astonishing distance from the immediately appealing tone of the works that he had composed prior to those years. These experiments included the first of his three concert rhapsodies, in which he completely emancipated himself from the established forms that he had filled out in his concertos for piano, violin, and violoncello, which already then were world famous. While the virtuosic ambitions of the rhapsodies are in no way inferior to the technical demands of their older sister works, he now requires what is perhaps an even higher measure of expressive shared experiencing and solo messaging. The direct juxtaposition of the two concert violin compositions recorded by Antje Weithaas and Daniel Raiskin and the Rhineland-Palatinate State Symphony Orchestra conveys the extraordinarily grand leap into a ‘modernism’ that hardly anybody would have thought possible for the author of the Sabre Dance. In 1971 Aram Khachaturian was honored for his rhapsodic risk-taking when he received the State Prize of the Soviet Union for his second concert trilogy.
Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto in D minor is a colored and sensual piece. Full of eastern influences and harmonies, it was first composed for David Oistrakh who performed it in 1940. Since then, the piece has traveled all over the world, and has become almost as famous as Khachaturian’s signature composition, “Saber Dance”. Appealing and exuberant, Khachaturian’s concerto is peppered with folk melodies. The violinist Antje Weithaas, plays it, in a truly romantic tradition, with passion and melancholy. Also included in the record is Khachaturian’s Concert-Rhapsody, a piece written in 1961 for Leonid Kogan, and a distant cousin to Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane. When first performed, Concert-Rhapsody glorified its dedicatee’s virtuosity. Antje Weithaas’s rendition goes well beyond its first intention, making it an inspiring universal piece of work.