Poetic Anniversary

Mendelssohn’s great violin concerto, premiered in 1845 with the same Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig heard on this CD, has been subject to any number of interpretations. In Anne-Sophie Mutter’s first recording of Mendelssohn’s basically high-spirited, heart-touching concerto, conducted by Herbert Von Karajan, the then 17-year-old prodigy took a lengthy six minutes for the Allegretto non troppo — Allegro molto vivace movement (listen here), and chose luxurious tempi for the other movements as well. Now, at age 45, she joins with one of her favorite conductors, former Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig conductor Kurt Masur, for faster, most provocative live reading of the concerto.

Mutter sounds almost timid at first, emerging from the veil to create tones of unexpected urgency and yearning. Building furiously, her violin hardly breathes until the first peak, after which its sighs of fragility often become as expressive as the human voice. Moving from serene tenderness to impulsive longing and back again, her rollercoaster interpretation underscores the sturm und drang (storms and stress) that she considers an essential part of Mendelssohn’s writing. Her impulsiveness continues in the gorgeous Andante (listen here), sinking into tenderness only toward the end, after scaling an emotional peak. The ebullient finale may take a minute longer than the famous Jascha Heifetz performance (with conductor Thomas Beecham), but it’s no less sensational in its virtuosic effect.

Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor and the Violin Sonata in F Major complete the disc. In the former, Mutter joins her ex-husband André Previn, whose pianism at the start of the andante is eloquent, and the great cellist Lynn Harrell, whose opening phrase is magnificently poetic. Mutter’s playing, too, is gorgeous. She and Previn also soar and sigh through the sonata, whose bountiful beauty will make you grateful that Yehudi Menuhin took up the unfinished sonata in 1953 and published the only completed version of the work. While DG isn’t going to win an engineering award for a recording that could be far more colorful, it compensates with a bonus DVD of the performances that also includes an 18-minute documentary on Mendelssohn’s life and the performances at hand. As beautiful as it is provocative, this is a recording that all lovers of Mendelssohn and great playing will want to hear, and many will grow to cherish.