ELGAR, E.: Violin Concerto in B minor (Shaham)

We Say...

Review by Jayson Greene

The British composer Edward Elgar holds the distinguished honor of being among the first in a long, long line of acquired British tastes. With his class resentments, addiction to nostalgia, and compulsive fetishization of the English countryside, he was more painfully English than Tennyson, Ray Davies and Basil Fawlty put together. For this, and for the slightly garish pomp of some of his more popular pieces, some listeners will forever find him distasteful. Even dedicated Elgar haters, however, have one piece whose genius they begrudgingly acknowledge: maybe it's The Dream of Gerontius, or his Cello Concerto, or his famous Enigma Variations — for many, it is this piece, written in 1910 at the height of his fame for uber-virtuoso Fritz Kreisler.

In this recording, it is played by modern uber-virtuoso Gil Shaham, and released on the violinist's Canary label. Shaham has been trotting the neverending superstar-violinist concerto circuit for nearly two decades now. Often, the monotony of this cycle — Bruch in Chicago on Thursday, fly to Cleveland for Sibelius on Saturday, Mendelssohn in New York the next week, repeat ad nauseam — proves the death of an original voice, smoothing away intriguing edges and breeding calcification and rot. The determination with which Shaham has fought off the cobwebs borders on the miraculous, and deserves its own ovation. Though he sometimes falls back on the sort of generalized ardor that can be counted on to reach the cheap seats, more often he plays with a liquid tone, audible gusto and unerring sensitivity. From his bracing entrance, where he digs in lustily on the opening notes before immediately dying away to a purr, it becomes clear that Shaham has made contact with the mercurial, often unreachable soul of this piece.

Elgar's concerto is probably the most diffuse of the violin repertoire, and certainly the least pyrotechnic. There are heroics aplenty in the violin part, for sure, but almost zero bravado, a liberal dash of which help make the Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn warhorses so durable. The main theme of the first movement is a gathering internal storm, a brooding figure in B minor that seems to well up and die in the same breath. It is the sound of suppressed discontent, a quelled emotional tempest, and the orchestra gives it plaintive shape. The violin line, meanwhile, twists unpredictably, turning away just when you might expect it to lean forward, then insisting passionately at exactly the moment it seemed to be fading to nothing. Elgar first got noticed for the eloquence with which he improvised, and the gently wandering quality of the solo line bears this out. For Shaham, who sometimes has trouble maintaining view of the bigger picture, this style fits perfectly: with his probing performance, he makes the piece sound like a revelation dawning in real time. Zinman and the orchestra are sensitive partners and play with the sumptuous tone Romantic music needs, and the result is an almost discomfitingly intimate portrait of private pain.