Nearly every international star of the violin has recorded the
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 47
, of
Sibelius
, one of the enduring favorites of the concert hall. Violinist
James Ehnes
can certainly stand with any of them. There are various ways of approaching the slow movement;
Ehnes
' reading stands far toward the unsentimental end of the spectrum, but sentiment is not why one listens to
. His finale, brilliantly executed from start to finish, has an irresistible momentum, but there is another factor setting this 2024 release apart from the crowd, and that is the inclusion of the rest of
' output for violin and orchestra.
was a violinist himself, loved the instrument, and wrote for it in several different modes.
includes several little-known pieces in
' theatrical mode, and these will be great crowd-pleasers. Consider the
Serenade in G minor, Op. 69, No. 2
, a splendid example of what Billboard magazine writers used to call a sentimentalizer. However, the real find is the
Suite for violin and string orchestra, Op. 117
, one of the very last pieces
wrote before falling silent for the last 30 years of his life. It is inexplicable why this work is not performed more often; perhaps only the shameful modernist bias against light music is to blame.
canceled its opus number and withdrew it after it was turned down by a publisher (American, which explains the English movement titles), but both composer and publisher were wrong. With its ostinatos and continuously developing melody, the work expands on the language of the
Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105
, in a lighter vein. It is beautifully suited to
' style, and here and throughout, he receives extremely sympathetic support from the
Bergen Symphony Orchestra
under conductor
Edward Gardner
. Likewise sympathetic is the sound environment of the Grieghallen in Bergen in the hands of the
Chandos
label's engineers. One of the strongest releases of late 2024, this album made classical best-seller charts in November of that year. ~ James Manheim