Classical CD of the Week

06.18.12
Vilde Frang
The Sunday Times

Tchaikovsky, Nielsen
Violin Concertos
Vilde Frang (violin), Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conductor Eivind Gullberg Jensen
EMI

After her acclaimed 2009 account of Sibelius's Violin Concerto, the exceptional Norwegian violinist turns even closer to home, with the Danish composer Nielsen's no less demanding, if idiosyncratic, example of the genre. This great work has risen markedly in esteem since pioneering recordings by the Hungarian-born, naturalized Briton Tibor Varga and Yehudi Menuhin in the 1950s and 1960s, though its champions in the concert hall and on disc still come largely from the Nordic lands. Vrang makes a bold impression with the Bachian muliple-stopping of the opening chords, building up an intensity that is released in the exuberant allegro cavalleresco. She brings an even greater spectrum of tonal colour and expressive shading to this music than her outstanding Danish counterpart Nicolaj Znaider in an earlier EMI recording, and her virtuosity is second to none. Clearly, in the DRSO and Jensen, she has Nielsen interpreters of the highest order — and they are no less idiomatic in the oft-recorded Tchaikovsky concerto, here sounding freshly conceived by Frang in an account that deserves to stand behind classic versions by Heifetz, Milstein and Oistrakh.