Josef Suk’s captivating Fantasy for violin and orchestra is the main item of interest here. Written the same year as his Asrael Symphony, the Fantasy features Suk’s beguiling and easily recognizable harmonic and orchestral style, though the mood is infinitely brighter and more festive than the symphony. The solo writing, in the late-romantic virtuoso tradition of violinist composers such as Wienawski, places exceptional demands on the performer–demands that Julia Fischer meets with impeccable musicianship and palpable zest. She’s matched in these qualities by Yakov Kreizberg’s stirring accompaniment with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic.
The disc’s other relative rarity, Respighi’s Poema autunnale, is a work more varied than its title implies, with strikingly rhapsodic passages interspersed among the more meditative ones. Respighi’s vivid, colorful orchestration (replete with celesta) makes a fine foil for the fetching solo writing, rendered with aplomb by Fischer.
Fischer proves just as masterful in the more familiar works, offering a tender and impassioned Chausson Poème, and a moving and beautifully played Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending. Kreizberg and orchestra capture the spirit, and conjure the appropriate aural atmosphere for each work.
The recording tends to favor the soloist over the orchestra, but otherwise is in fine sound–unless you have the download version (on which I based this review), in which case you’ll hear the same low quality, disintegrating sound I mentioned in a previous Deutsche Grammophon review. (This has been a problem with Universal Music downloads for several months now).
