Mullova Violin Concerto CD

Hi,

Does anybody have any opinions on Viktoriia Mullova's new CD of the Beethoven/Mendelssohn concerti? It's been available in US only since yesterday and I'm still looking for reviews before taking the plunge.

Thanks,

I'm curious as well . . .

I am too, but will not allow myself to buy yet another Beethoven VC!

I asked about that before, and noone responded. Now I see why

I wish Philips According to http://www.jose-sanchez-penzo.net/strad.html (a great 'who plays what' site, BTW) she plays the 1723 Falk Stradivari.

Bill in Seattle

Oh yes, but strings, bow? The orchestra is HIP and she has been interested in HIP as well, so more detail would not have hurt... it is a full-price, brand-new release after all, and the interpretations are quite interesting. Anyone who has expected racing tempi from Gardiner, or a concerto for violin and drums in the Zehetmeier/Brueggen way, will be surprised. The Mendelssohn is 4 min longer than Heifetz/Monteux. The timing of the Beethoven is not comparable because she plays candenzas by Ottavio Dantone. All in all, I found it interesting and enjoyable. (In the meanwhile, I heard the recent Beethoven by Mutter, and I had to laugh at a certain place...)

Cheers

Hmmm, Mullova playing HIP? Interesting, hard to imagine, given her training/background. If it's true, she wasn't playing her Strad.

Bill in Seattle

Silly me, I meant Heifetz/Munch of course. Where did Monteux jump out

says...

It's not her first HIP outing - there's also a rather good, recent Mozart disc on Philips containing three concertos with the OAE.

She probably was. According to an interview with her, together with Gardiner, published in the September issue of the BBC Music Magazine, she has been experimenting for some time with gut strings fitted to her Strad, using a variety of period bows and re-tuning.

A HIP instrument is far more than just changing strings and bridge, and using a baroque bow. You need to open up the instrument, glue in a much slighter/short bass bar. Then you need to re-graft the neck to its original (shorter) length...this involves cutting off the old neck at the peg box, and making the new one from fresh stock. The HIP neck is a profoundly different beast than the 19th-C one...much thicker and clubbier, and it projects to a lower height at the bridge. Also, the fingerboard is _much_ shorter than the standard modern one.

All these changes yield an instrument that is virtually unplayable by most modern performers, unless they're willing to made drastic technical adjustments. And, unless you're willing to change everything back again, the instrument is useless to performers playing the modern repertoire. And if you decide to 'unconvert', there's no guarantee you'll end up with exactly what you started with (in fact, it's almost guaranteed you won't).

To convert a nice Strad, worth hundreds of thousands of $$, is an extremely gutsy thing to do...if Mullova did it, more power to her! I guess she can afford to do whatever she wants.

Most HIP violinists prefer the sound of Tyrolian instruments (the most famous example being Stainer) over Cremonese, and players of the time did too.

I remember hearing somewhere that Edward Melkus used a converted Strad in some of his baroque recordings, but have never heard these.

Bill in Seattle