Seperated More In Time Than Style

Two violin concertos make up this month's free cd offering from BBC Music magazine. I was going to call them two contrasting violin concertos since they were written over two hundred years apart but in fact they do not really inhabit radically different sound worlds. First up is Mozart's Violin Concerto No 4 played by Hilary Hahn and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis at the Last Night of the Proms in 2000. It is a well remembered performance and although there are not too many virtuosic fireworks, it is worthy of the esteem in which it is held. I do have another commercial recording of this work but the other piece featured on the disk is my only copy. It is Korngold's Violin Concerto, again with the BBC Symphony this time conducted by Jiri Belohlavek with the orchestra's leader Andrew Haveron as soloist. It is a romantic work with plenty of melody, written after WW2 but with no obvious reference to the traumas of that period. It is hard to resist the temptation to say that it often sounds like film music. But of course, Korngold instigated that tradition and style of film music in the early days of the talkies in Hollywood and is really only staying true to his musical roots. Haveron's performance more than stands comparison with Hahn's in the Mozart.