Though these are not, as Pickwick unwarily announced, ''first ever recordings'' of these works (the Hungarian Concerto has been recorded twice before, in a cut version by Aaron Rosand and complete by Louis Treger, and the Hamlet Overture is available on the Marco Polo label), they are none the less welcome. Joseph Joachim (who was born not near Budapest, as the otherwise good note here states, but 180 miles north-west of it, outside what is now Bratislava) was a child prodigy—Mendelssohn took him up and circumvented the Philharmonic Society of London's ban on child performers—who developed into one of Europe's greatest violinists and violin teachers. His fame in these capacities has all but totally eclipsed his activities as a composer, nearly all of which were confined to his earlier years (he gave up composing because of feeling inferior to Brahms, his close associate for many years—though in matters of orchestration he was admittedly the superior).
An enthusiast for Shakespeare, he wrote the Hamlet Overture at the age of 22 at the end of his time as concertmaster of Liszt's orchestra in Weimar. It is a sombre, passionate work of much dramatic power, admired by Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz though in no way programmatic (Ophelia doesn't get much of a look in), but finely crafted. By the following year, when he composed the Shakespearian Henry IV Overture (which, it says here, had to be played from a manuscript score as it was never published, though Tovey, who knew Joachim well, confidently says it was) he had transferred his allegiance from the Liszt camp to Brahms; but the change of style—more 'classical' (with hints of Mendelssohn) and less enterprising—finds him less sure of himself and less inspired.
Joachim's most famous work, his second violin concerto, was written in 1858 (parallel with Brahms's piano concerto in the same key of D minor) and was called by Tovey ''one of the most important documents of the middle of the 19th century''. Extremely long and exacting, it is certainly one of the most difficult of violin concertos, though Joachim had no interest in virtuosity for its own sake. The solo instrument's first entry, after a lengthy initial tutti, is strikingly original; themes make play with Lombard rhythms and the exotic interval of the augmented second; there is a finely controlled freedom in the construction of the first Allegro; features of the second movement are the violin's embroideries over the cellos' reprise of the romantic main subject, and the echo of the slow movement of the Beethoven Concerto; and the gipsy finale is brilliant and fiery. Only very occasionally does the American violinist Elmar Oliveira (a gold medallist in the 1978 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow) betray any discomfort at the work's fiendish demands: his playing is indeed impressive, and he is backed up with spirit by the LPO, which in the overtures gives committed performances, recorded with great clarity but just a slight edginess. Altogether, for those of an enquiring mind, a disc well worth investigating: the Hamlet Overture in particular deserves to be rescued from oblivion.'