These two concertos pair wonderfully together. Both are founded in the late romantic tradition and are great works for their unique style, melodic, and harmonic language.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor composed his Violin Concerto in 1911 (it was to be his last major work). The first draft was conceived using negro spirituals, but the composer was dissatisfied with this and rewrote it employing original thematic material, thus freeing the music of any particular narrative. However, there are traces of these same spirituals along with African folk material (the composer’s parents were from England and Sierra Leone) in the music’s melodies and harmonies which, combined with influences of Dvořák and Tchaikovsky, make the concerto a work of exceptional beauty and power in its own right.
Opening with a dramatic martial theme, the music soon beguiles with Coleridge-Taylor’s “spirituals” harmonic modulations. The second movement is a unique waltz of such lyrical beauty you can imagine it being sung by a gondolier, while the marching finale features a dramatic return of the first movement’s theme in its second half. The violin writing is virtuosic without being “showy” (Maud Powell, an American violinist and new music champion who influenced the composition, gave the premiere in 1912). Gil Shaham has fully embraced the concerto and he revels in the works fetching melodies and technical challenges with a bright, singing tone that delights the ear and touches the heart. Conductor Eric Jacobsen’s alert and flexible reading with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra brings out the color and power of the orchestral accompaniment.
Shaham’s equal enthusiasm for Dvorák’s Violin Concerto (1883) shows in the unusually swift tempo he and conductor Jacobsen deploy in the first movement, where the high energy evokes the spirit of the composer’s overtly nationalist works. The music itself, a mixture of serious and sweet, invites Shaham to alternate between sternness and playfulness, which he brings off brilliantly. Shaham’s impeccable playing renders the songful slow movement with endearing warmth and enlivens the dancing finale, again played faster than usual and sounding like one of Dvorak’s Slavonic dances, bringing the piece to a rousing close.
The disc concludes with Curtis Stewart’s *F. Harper* (from The Famous People) which draws parallels between the histories of slavonic peoples and Black Americans. Starting with sounds of dragging on the strings, the music morphs into fragments of Dvorák’s Slavonic Dance Op.53, No.2, as if dispersed through a prism. It’s a curious piece that turns fun once you recognize the tune.
The recording was made in Virgina Beach’s Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, a cathedral-like acoustic that sets the music in a highly reverberant space which the engineers must have worked very hard to tame. Turning up the volume to bring the orchestra closer results in Shaham’s violin sounding gigantic in some passages. But don’t let this slight sonic oddity deter you, this is a marvelous release that will bring much enjoyment.
