Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto, Julia Fischer

Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto is a difficult work to bring off. Not only is the writing for the soloist fiendishly difficult, but the ebb and flow of moods and tempi make it an awkward work for conductors to negotiate with any degree of ease. This new recording by 23-year-old Julia Fischer is remarkable for the way in which it surmounts both these obstacles. Fischer copes effortlessly with all the technical demands, the double-stopping perfectly in tune, the runs even, the harmonics pure as gossamer. She plays gracefully and musically with a clear, beautiful tone, without sounding in any way lightweight.

Kreizberg and the orchestra are with her at every turn, generating a fine momentum in the first movement, displaying great tenderness in the folk-melodies of the Canzonetta and matching Fischer’s whirlwind approach in the Finale. The high standard is maintained in the couplings, the appearance of the relatively rare Valse-Scherzo an added bonus.

I would certainly rank this new recording of the concerto ahead of Vengerov and Chung; my violinist colleague Heather reckons Milstein’s recording is the only other serious contender for top ranking. Pentatone’s sound is splendid.

About the concerto’s difficult premiere

The technical demands the review opens by describing weren’t a new observation in Fischer’s case, they go right back to the piece’s origin. Tchaikovsky dedicated the concerto to the violinist and teacher Leopold Auer, who promptly declared it unplayable and refused to premiere it; Auer later reversed that judgement completely and became one of the work’s great champions, though not before the damage was done. The actual premiere, given instead by Adolph Brodsky in Vienna in December 1881 under Hans Richter with a barely-rehearsed orchestra, was by most accounts a disaster, and the critic Eduard Hanslick’s review has become one of the most quoted put-downs in music history, he wrote that the concerto brought him to “the revolting thought that there may be music that stinks in the ear,” though the same review also conceded the piece “has proportion, is musical, and is not without genius.” A soloist who makes the concerto sound as effortless as Fischer does here is, in a real sense, still answering Auer’s original verdict.