WIDOR Symphony No 1. Violin Concerto. La Nuit de Walpurgis
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Charles-Marie(-Jean-Albert) Widor
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Dutton Epoch
Magazine Review Date: 08/2015
Media Format: Super Audio CD
Media Runtime: 77
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CDLX7315
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
La Nuit de Walpurgis, Symphonic Poem |
Charles-Marie(-Jean-Albert) Widor, Composer
Charles-Marie(-Jean-Albert) Widor, Composer Martin Yates, Conductor Royal Scottish National Orchestra |
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra |
Charles-Marie(-Jean-Albert) Widor, Composer
Charles-Marie(-Jean-Albert) Widor, Composer Martin Yates, Conductor Royal Scottish National Orchestra Sergey Levitin, Violin |
Symphony No 1 |
Charles-Marie(-Jean-Albert) Widor, Composer
Charles-Marie(-Jean-Albert) Widor, Composer Martin Yates, Conductor Royal Scottish National Orchestra |
Author: Jeremy Nicholas
Whatever you think of the material, one has to acknowledge Widor the master orchestrator, Dutton’s sumptuously engineered sound and the full-bodied, punchy playing of the RSNO, who give every impression of thoroughly enjoying themselves, not least in the three-movement symphonic poem La nuit de Walpurgis. Widor wrote this in 1887 for orchestra and chorus. The choral part is not included here (we are not told why) yet it is, as the booklet puts it, ‘a sparkling tour de force of orchestral writing’ and a striking example of the nouvelle vague of serious French symphonic aspirations.
That Widor wrote a Violin Concerto will come as a surprise to many. Martin Yates relates in the booklet how he unearthed it, although whether it is the concerto premiered in 1877, a revised version from 1894 or a conflation of the two remains a puzzle. What we have in Yates’s edition is a three-movements-in-one work of great charm and melodic appeal, with all the characteristic display and lyrical writing one expects from a late-19th-century concerto though not, despite Sergey Levitin’s honey-toned advocacy, on a par with the almost exactly contemporaneous examples by Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Goldmark, Bruch (No 2) and Lalo (Symphonie espagnole).
The disc ends with the earliest work here in order of composition. Symphony No 1 was written in 1870 at a time when French composers rarely ventured into the genre. Widor in later life denounced it as being ‘completely unskilled and naive from the orchestral point of view’. Too harsh, I think, and Yates inspires a performance of such conviction from his players it is as if he wishes to prove the composer wrong.
Explore the world’s largest classical music catalogue on Apple Music Classical.
Included with an Apple Music subscription. Download now.
Gramophone Digital Club
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Events & Offers
From £9.20 / month
SubscribeGramophone Club
- Print Edition
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Events & Offers
From £11.45 / month
Subscribe
If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.