There are pairings that are purely practical in motivation – two works that happen to fit on one disc – and there are pairings that make a dramaturgical argument. This cd unquestionably belongs to the latter category, and the argument is convincing: by confronting the ubiquitous e minor concerto by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847) with the early, still rarely performed d minor concerto, Elvin Hoxha Ganiyev presents two works by the same composer at two crucial moments in his development. Between 1822 and 1844 there are not coincidentally twenty-two years; in that period Mendelssohn evolves from a composer with a pronounced classical foundation to a mature romantic voice. This recording makes that evolution remarkably clear in barely fifty-one minutes.
The d minor concerto, written when Mendelssohn was thirteen – in the same period in which he also composed his twelve string symphonies, as if composing for this boy was second nature – bears clear traces of his intense engagement with Bach. The motor energy of the opening movement betrays music that does not hide its Sturm-und-Drang heritage, but at the same time, in the lyrical Andante, already suggests an emotional depth that will only fully mature twenty years later. That the work, after its creation, remained outside the concert repertoire for a long time and only came back into strong focus in the twentieth century, partly thanks to Yehudi Menuhin's performance in 1951, remains a curious episode in the reception history of nineteenth-century concerto literature. All the more surprising is it that this concerto still appears so rarely on concert programmes today.
The e minor concerto, by contrast, is the product of an entirely different working method: not youthful spontaneity that comes to paper in a few weeks, but a process of years of revision and refinement, nourished by close collaboration with Ferdinand David. You hear that different genesis: every measure reveals a composer who has carefully considered every detail. The innovations that make the work a landmark – the solo entry without orchestral exposition, the cadenza that appears not at the end but in the middle of the development, the seamless transitions between movements – are by now canonical, but they lose nothing of their boldness by that, especially when presented as clearly as here.
Who is the soloist who takes on this double challenge? Elvin Hoxha Ganiyev (°1997), from a musical family, is today regarded as one of the most striking young violinists of his generation – not least because he himself made his solo debut at the age of eight, a precocity that fits nicely with the prodigy that Mendelssohn was when he wrote the d minor concerto. His training with, among others, Zakhar Bron and Krzysztof Węgrzyn, combined with an international concert practice, explains the stylistic versatility that characterizes this recording. He plays a rare Guarneri filius Andreae from 1715, with the support of the Haydar Aliyev Foundation – an instrument whose warm, rounded tone comes across beautifully in this recording.
What distinguishes this performance from countless other recordings of the e minor concerto is precisely the awareness that both works demand a different approach. Ganiyev points out in the cd booklet that the d minor concerto offers far more interpretative freedom than the later work, and those two approaches are indeed audible. In the early concerto he allows himself ornaments and rubati that give the music an almost improvised élan, without ever doing violence to the classical clarity; in the later work he bends disciplined to the text, without the performance ever becoming dry or academic. It is telling how he describes the challenge of this over-familiar work: he had, in his own words, to "stop playing automatically" and repeatedly ask himself what he actually wanted to do here. That search for a personal yet text-conscious interpretation is precisely what keeps this reading of the e minor concerto from routine.
The role of the orchestra also changes fundamentally between both works – from a purely accompanying string apparatus in the d minor concerto to a full symphonic orchestra in the later work. The Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen and Howard Griffiths prove themselves admirably equal to that shift. Griffiths builds with his orchestra a sound world that seamlessly adapts to what each work requires – chamber-like and agile in the early concerto, colourful and full of relief in the later one. The orchestra does not merely accompany, but constantly engages musically: the balance with the soloist remains exemplary, without the orchestral part losing character. It is precisely that combination of servitude and personality that deserves explicit praise.
Ganiyev's tone – sweet-sounding, singing, with a natural warmth that owes as much to his Guarneri as to his own musicality – forms the common thread through both works. It is a sound that fits just as effortlessly into the childlike naivety of the d minor concerto as into the more mature, romantic rhetoric of the later work, without ever sounding forced. The folkloristically tinged third movement of the early concerto in particular gains a delightful lightness from this, while the e minor concerto radiates a restrained, lived maturity that never lapses into sentimentality.
This cd owes its greatest raison d'être not only to a fresh reading of the over-familiar e minor concerto, but above all to the courageous – and musically entirely justified – choice to pair it with its wrongly neglected younger sibling. Soloist, conductor and orchestra pull together here, driven by the same conviction that even celebrated repertoire can – and must – be questioned anew each time. This recording not only sheds new light on the familiar masterpiece, but above all makes clear how fascinating it is to hear Mendelssohn grow from prodigy to mature master.