Fabulous Duos

On my return home, apart from finding my flat at 12.6 degrees C, I also found the Philippe Graffin/Nobuko Imai CD of Mozart recordings, including the violin/viola duos K423 and K424 and the Sinfonia Concertante, plus some violin/orchestra stuff.

Even the cover of the CD is lovely, with both soloists looking straight at the beholder. Not sure why Graffin is wearing an overcoat while holding his fiddle, but il est francais et il est tres elegant. (Je ne sais pas ou sont les accents).

I really really like the violin viola duos - you don't hear them often, but particularly K424 is fun. This goes back to my pre-viola days, specifically the Mozart year 1991, when the violinist Gyorgy Pauk and Nobuko Imai played them in a series of Mozart concerts on the BBC. That has always been my gold standard. Most performers play them safely and prettily, and oh, so seriously. My test for fun (though I usually notice the absence of it much earlier) are a couple of notes in the last movement of the K424 movement which should just cheekily be thrown up into the air. Philippe Graffin, the violinist, is as close as anyone I've heard (apart from Pauk) to have got there, though even he is having a little trouble letting them go. But on the whole this is a seriously energetic performance, though it also has some winsome moments where they are needed. I'm not quite sure what it is with the balance, though - the violin seems to be closer to the mike - or is it the usual pitch problem with the viola?

The sinfonia concertante is taken at extremes - with very short, spiky notes in the first movement (as does Graffin in the third violin concerto, also on the CD), followed by a rather unexpected rallentando in the middle of the movement. The second movement is taken rather languidly, oozing pain (though the orchestra seems to suffer more pain than the soloists in some places). The soloists duet beautifully here; there are some exquisite heart meltingly delicate moments about halfway through the second movement. Then they race each other through the final movement to the end!

On this CD Graffin (who memorably with Imai did the world premiere of Barkauskas Duo Concertante in Vilnius about 3 years ago) also conducts Het Brabants Orkest, which also seems to be an extremely energetic and assertive band. Though that he forgets the dynamic contrast in my favourite place in the introduction of the Sinfonia Concertante (a pizz in the violin, debating with the horns) is almost unforgivable.

Overall it's a wonderful set of recordings on 2 CDs. Most people probably Mozart violin concerto recordings ad nauseam. The problem probably was that both the sinfonia concertante of 38 minutes and the violin/viola duos totalling 41 minutes were too long to fit together on one disc, so they had to think of something else....