Violinist Takako Nishizaki has a fine technique allied to good taste and sensitive all-around musicianship. She has made a career pursuing interesting and unusual repertoire, much of which has appeared on the Naxos/Marco Polo labels. Perhaps her most famous “discovery” was The Butterfly Lovers concerto, written in tandem by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao. Many harsh words have been said about the work’s overt socialist realist origins, its unadventurous idiom, and film score orchestration. Of course, film scores are now in fashion, and the truth is that it’s no less appealing than any number of 19th century virtuoso concertos far less attractive thematically and orchestrally, and better than many of them. You probably already know if you like it or not.
That said, this performance goes to the top of the heap. Nishizaki, whose previous recordings of the work (and there have been several) have sold millions of copies, knows the music better than anyone, and plays with consummate finesse and sensitivity. Her performance isn’t all that different from her previous one for Naxos, but she’s much better recorded, and she receives notably better support from Judd and the New Zealand Symphony than that offered by the Shanghai Conservatory ensemble on her last go-round. Perhaps this version displays a touch more vivid contrast between quick and slow sections. In any case, I found the work’s 28 minutes passing by very pleasantly, and with no dead spots at all. Nishizaki’s sweetly focussed tone soars above the ensemble like a sort of Chinese Lark Ascending, and who wouldn’t enjoy that?
This new release also features a much more interesting coupling than formerly. Peter Breiner provided the less than wonderful orchestrations on Naxos’ Albeniz Iberia, but he’s on much better form in this original work. Songs and Dances from the Silk Road takes eight folk tunes and arranges them as a suite for violin and orchestra. The solo part doesn’t sound especially difficult, and the idiom certainly isn’t adventurous despite some pitch-bending in the third movement (“Spinning”), but I’m a sucker for this sort of thing, and once again Nishizaki and Judd turn in a performance that leaves nothing to be desired. It’s very interesting to note that the fourth movement sounds a bit Latin, and there are touches of everything from Prokofiev to Liszt elsewhere, but whether or not this evokes the Silk Road hardly matters: it’s pretty music nevertheless. Individual movements would make great encore pieces. I enjoyed this disc very much, and it deserves to “cross over” and become very popular. It’s a class act. [8/2/2004]
