Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto [Nikkanen/ Simonov-The London Philharmonic]Kurt Nikkanen is new to me, i bought this disc a few months ago, he's an American, he made this recording 20 years ago in 1990, he's now 44.
Collins Classics was a record label that ran from 1989-1998, it's a shame that it closed down, it was very innovative, and some wonderful discs were produced, and here's one of them, a nice pic of Nikkanen on the front cover [by Hanya Chlala].
I so much enjoyed this first movement, it starts off so unassuming and innocent at first, as if it sounds like it's not going to be a serious work, even the first notes of the violin playing solo [0:52] are nothing barnstorming, there's nothing to signify that this is going to be a great work, the main tune is presented by the violin [1:18], a nice enough tune, but again presented without any pomp or importance, there's a certain Slavic whine about the violin tone here, a little later there's a nice change by the violin, it sings a new enduring / pleading tune [3:26], full of pathos, which builds up to a lyrical intensity [4:50], the orchestra gets its big chance to show off its muscle [6:37-7:14], in a sort of military Tchaikovsky fashion, his way with nationalistic music is superb, nice solo violin work too, with the violin embellishing every few notes with extra bowing [8:07-9:13], the solo cadenza starts slap bang in the middle of this movement [10:09-13:09], a strange place to put it, it's not entirely a great cadenza either, and it's quite long too [3 minutes], maybe a shorter one towards the end would have worked better, the rest of the movement is very much the same as the first half, but right near the end there's a frantic-ness that's created, with some high pitched treble screams from the violin [17:50-17:59], and the orchestra also develop this frantic-ness [18:41], which continues right to the end of the piece in a blaze of busyness.
Here's Mayuko Kamio playing the first movement on YouTube.
