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Aaron Rosand - My Legacy
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Performer: Aaron Rosand with pianist Hugh Sung.
"The Chopin Nocturnes adapt so beautifully to the violin.
The expressive use of the vibrato and portamento enhance the lyric line."
Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937)Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)
- Nocturne and Tarantella Op. 28; Three Myths, Op. 30
- Fountain of Arethusa (5:00)
- Narcissus (6:16)
- Dryads and Pan (6:29)
- Romance, Op. 23 (5:26)
- Chant De Roxane (from the opera "Le Roi Roger") (4:06)
Henryk Wieniawski (1835-1880)
- Nocturne in E flat major, Op. 9, No. 2 (transcribed by Pablo Sarasate) (4:30)
- Nocturne in E minor, Op. 37, No. 1 (transcribed by A. Wilhelmj) (6:19)
- Nocturne in D major, Op. 27, No. 2 (transcribed by A. Wilhelmj) (5:30)
- Nocturne in C sharp minor (posthumous) (transcribed by Nathan Milstein) (4:20)
- Capriccio-Valse, Op. 7 (4:49)
- Saltarelle (Caprice for Violin) (2:01)
- Souvenir de Moscou, Op. 6 (8:25)
1 Compact Discs:73:27 ADD, Artek AR 0011-2, 2003
I am dedicating this album of Polish composers to my beloved father, who was born in Lowicz, Poland, at the turn of the last century. It was his intense love of music and the violin that had prompted my early musical training in Chicago before my 4th birthday. His devotion and sacrifice to pay for a violin and music lessons during the depression years cannot be forgotten.
Recording the Szymanowski works has special significance as these pieces were written for Paul Kochanski, the previous owner of my violin. Karol Szymanowski, Paul Kochanski and the incomparable pianist, Artur Rubinstein, were very close friends. This may account for the extraordinary difficulty of the piano scores. It seems only fitting to record these works for the violin for which they were conceived.
The Chopin Nocturnes adapt so beautifully to the violin. The expressive use of the vibrato and portamento enhance the lyric line. In this recording, I have included two rarely heard transcriptions by the 19th century German violinist August Wilhelmj. The famous E-Flat Major Nocturne is a brilliant adaptation by the Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, and the C-sharp minor Nocturne was brilliantly transcribed by Nathan Milstein one of the master violinists of the 20th century. This composition, I might add, was my mother's favorite.
The three works of Henryk Wieniawski, another violin great of the nineteenth century, have been neglected of late. The current trend of recital programming has, for the most part, eliminated short pieces in favor of major sonatas. Violinist-composer works by Vieuxtemps, Paganini, Wieniawski, Sarasate, Kreisler, etc., have all but disappeared from the printed program. This is sad, as no composer can exploit violinistic possibilities as well as master violinist composers.
It is my fervent desire to keep these virtuoso works from being forgotten.
Nineteenth and twentieth century audiences clamored to hear them and
invariably this was what brought the house down and remained memorable.
--Aaron Rosand
This is a beautifully played, well-conceived recital of Polish music that Rosand dedicates to his father, who was born in Lowicz, Poland at the turn of the last century. His father started him on the vioin and sacrificed during the Great Depression to pay for violin lessons for his son.
Rosand plays each piece as to the manner born. The Szymanowski miniatures are fevered and ethereal, the Chopin Nocturnes ardent, and the Wieniawski bonbons playful. Rosand still has the technique to pull off this program, but he doesn't aim for flash anymore, preferring to play each work as a character study rather than as an opportunity for showing off. An interesting note for violin aficionados: Rosand plays the same Guarnerius del Gesu violin that was played by Paul Kochanski, the violinist who worked with Szymanowski to arrange and compose his music for violin.
--American Record Guide, November/December 2002, Page 227
Rosand's Legacy, as one can determine from the programme he essays, is Polish. To this a little greater spice is added because he plays the ex-Kochanski Guarneri; Szymanowski's Three Myths were dedicated to that magnificent but sadly short-lived violinist. Recorded in May 2001 Rosand shows few signs of technical decline and none at all of a loss of expressive nuance. Part of something of a Golden Age of American violinists – in an era in which Isaac Stern ruled the roost domestically – Rosand has recorded for a number of smaller labels and the latest is Artek. He is a marvellous musician and as he showed during his last London visit, when I heard him at the Wigmore Hall, his ability to coax a sweet yet powerful tone is unimpeded, his slides still apposite and tastefully deployed, his whole artistic persona one of generous engagement - one of the very best violinists of his generation.
He catches the soaringly fractured line in Szymanowski's Nocturne, its folk impulses perfectly understood and in the Tarantella he is effortlessly virtuosic, a suitably dramatic orator; my only complaint is that the balance favours the excellent pianist Hugh Sung, a splendidly active musician but here one who can submerge the violin. The phantasmagoric intensity of the Fountain of Arethusa is treated to Rosand's special poetic intensity and luscious deployment of expressive devices. His intonation remains under control, his playing one of optimum poeticism. In Narcissus he seems to inhabit its rapturous introversion - intoxicating – and he flutters and skitters, running through daredevil heroics in Dryads and Pan. But he is just as capable of catching the essence, the core of the hallucinatory, otherworldly syntax even down to the puckish, throwaway spectral finish. Rosand lavishes the full range of his bewitching tone colours on the Op. 23 Romance – very tender playing with superior and sophisticated finger position changes.
He also plays a group of Chopin Nocturnes; two in nowadays somewhat overlooked arrangements by August Wilhelmj, one by Sarasate and one by Milstein (the familiar C sharp minor). I like the way he points up the rather idiomatically solemn religiosity of the central section of the E minor (in the Wilhelmj transcription). Perhaps he lacks Milstein's stillness in the C sharp minor but this is still a good performance. In the Wieniawski group his Capriccio-Valse is not too fingerbustingly motoric – it has colour, it has luscious tone, it has poise. The moto perpetuo type Saltarelle (actually a Caprice) is in true nineteenth century showstopper tradition – and Rosand doesn't let us down – and the recital ends with the more familiar Souvenir de Moscou. Here is more evidence of the sheer elegance and precision of his playing. The harmonics are negotiated with panache though the tempo is never excessive.
My admiration for Rosand has lasted a long time and is undimmed. His latest release continues in the tradition of his august discographic predecessors. He is a violinist we will hear whatever he plays.
--Jonathan Woolf
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