One feels that it’s very much the pianist’s hand on the throttle of Weber’s ghost train, plunging ahead one moment, the next, pulling back.

Ahead of her Australian dates, the German violinist talks music, Mendelssohn and staying up late with Ivry Gitlis.

Scary time, the 1930s, when the Stalinist denunciation of Soviet artists made for serious anxiety among composers just waiting for the dreaded knock at the door from the secret police, and some of the justifiable paranoia is manifested in the music itself. Take the searing opening solo melody in Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto for instance, with which Dutch star Janine Jansen opens her outstanding new all- Prokofiev disc. It’s a restless, unsettled kind of thing, and that first movement as a whole is a musical cat on a hot tin roof, jumping at its own shadows, and made all the more disconcerting by the intellectual clarity of the performance and the equivalent audio definition in a masterly production job by Decca’s engineers. Not that it’s all Reds-under-the-bed hysteria. The concerto’s slow movement is a gloriously long-arching melody, even if the mechanical accompaniment provides a menacing, albeit subtle, reminder of the machinery of war parading by outside. Every note here is made to count, and while it never fully engages the emotions, Jansen again demonstrates why her first recording back in 2004 sold 300,000 copies. She is the violinist for the age, detached yet precise, cool but considered, and when she……

“Too much beer and bread,” said Paul Dukas about the music of Johannes Brahms, and certainly there have been some who have found the contrapuntal density of the Viennese master an inhibition. It would be a churlish listener, however, who could apply this prejudice to the violin sonatas, packed as they are with gentle lyricism,
 memorable melody and plenty 
of fresh air between the notes.
These three works, written over 
a ten-year period, show Brahms
 at his sunniest and have attracted distinguished interpreters. This 
latest CD features British violinist
 Anthony Marwood and his Serbian
 partner, pianist Aleksandar Madžar, recorded live at London’s Wigmore Hall. The duo recently delighted Australian audiences on their national tour for Musica Viva and so this CD is doubly welcome. The G Major Sonata here receives one of
 the loveliest readings I can recall, Marwood’s silvery tone spinning a continuous line with numerous inspired touches. A violinist with 
a lighter touch yields riches and offers greater flexibility than those who opt for melody at the expense of a more engaging conversational tone. The outer movements capture Brahms’s magical Viennese lilt and the poignant Adagio is especially memorable, its mellow song wistfully tugging at the heart. Madžar here……

Despite the academic narrative that suggests opposing aesthetics, the pairing of the Brahms and Berg Violin Concertos makes perfect historical sense, Berg’s anguished tribute In Memory of an Angel 
to Alma Mahler’s daughter, who died aged just 18, representing a logical extension of the late Romantic sensibility from which the Second Viennese School took its lead. But French violinist Renaud Capuçon’s performance of the two works, conducted by fellow 30-something Daniel Harding with the Vienna Philharmonic, almost makes Brahms sound postmodern compared with the merely “modern” Berg, courtesy of the vastly different characters that he brings to each of its three movements. Technically excellent throughout, the first movement of the Brahms faffs about interpretively for nearly its entire 22-minute duration, not really engaging the emotions, until the Kreisler cadenza (so much spikier and self-conscious than the usual
 Joachim one) suddenly resolves into the most sublime conclusion imaginable. The slow movement then continues in the same
 vein, making it a candidate for a standalone Swoon compilation. Then the finale sounds like it’s had its structure rearranged by Picasso in his cubist phase, passages of clashing genres and rhythmic gear shifts being emphasised (à la Boulez with Mahler) rather than reconciled. And……

Australian audiences experienced Alina Ibragimova’s light, luminous tone firsthand in her recitals with pianist Cédric Tiberghien. It’s a sound as suited to the beloved Mendelssohn concerto as the 27-year-old violinist is to her partners on this disc, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. On gut strings, this warhorse is leavened with much-needed finesse. Ibragimova launches straight into the first movement’s Molto Appassionato with sweetly focused tone – no need to milk that aching, Jewish-sounding melody when it unfolds so simply. She lingers tantalisingly on lyrical phrases, but dispatches fast passages with whiplike agility (if a little less warmth), only occasionally on the verge of getting ahead of herself. It’s that balance of impetuous zeal reeled in by cool, crisp discipline that makes this young firebrand such an exciting performer. Her cadenza is heart-on-sleeve with some very exposed playing – delicate but not lacking in energy – and the riccochet passage passes through ear-bending dynamic gradation before melting back into the main theme of the orchestral recapitulation. Throughout most of the recording Ibragimova uses vibrato sparingly but judiciously. It’s a little soppy in the tranquil Andante, but still a palate cleanser compared to sickly sweet James Ehnes on Onyx. The…

The 25-year-old Scottish violin sensation adds another distinguished string to her bow.

Thoughts on the premature demise of an ensemble whose grand dreams were dashed against the rocks of financial reality. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

On the transformative power of music, whether played by professionals or underprivileged children. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The virtuosos reveal the recipe to their 20-year chemistry, and details of their latest collaboration. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Nicola Benedetti makes for a poised, but overqualified, screen siren.

The violinist spent two days with primary school kids and Sydney Youth Orchestra.