Recording Review
Rare French Works For Violins & Orchestra
Fauré: Violin Concerto in D minor Op. 14; Saint-Saëns: Morceau de concert Op. 62; Lalo: Fantasie Norvégienne, Guitarre Op. 28; Guiraud: Caprice; Canteloube: Poème
Philippe Graffin violin
Ulster Orchestra
Thierry Fischer conductor
Hyperion CDA 67294
Gramphone, May 2002
by Michael Oliver
Graffin's intelligent and characterful playing serves up a rare feast
'Rare' is doubly true: the quality of the playing here deserves that adjective. Until I heard Philippe Graffin play Fauré's 'Concerto' (the first movement of a work he never managed to finish) I agreed with Robert Orledge's view of it: 'Fauré grappling with unsuitable material'. But where, for example, other violinists have made its first solo gesture sound like an unsuccessful attempt at bravura flashiness, Graffin plays it with quiet thoughtfulness and at once one recognises Fauré's voice. He sounds, in short, like a player who knows Fauré's chamber music and recalls how movingly he quoted the early Concerto in his last work, the String Quartet. But how will he manage in the Lalo and Saint-Saëns pieces, written for the fiery Sarasate?
Very well indeed is the answer. Immediately in the Saint-Saëns Morceau de concert (originally intended as one movement of the third violin concerto) Graffin produces a more open, virtuoso manner, and finds an appropriate flamboyance in Lalo's Fantasie (which is like a briefer, Nordic equivalent of his Symphonie espagnole). In both, however, he shows affectionate delicacy as well, and his sympathetic seeking-out of each composer's voice is particularly effective in the two completely unknown works here (so far as I can tell neither has been recorded before). Poor Ernest Guiraud, condemned to be unheard because he was an academic who wrote the 'unsuitable' recitatives for Bizet's Carmen! His Caprice is so rich in melody, at times earnest, at others agreeably sentimental, that Graffin and Fischer between them make a strong case for investigating his long-neglected operas. Poor Joseph Canteloube, so famous for the Chants d'Auvergne that we suspect that he couldn't write tunes of his own! His Poème is lusciously scored and richly violinistic, but long-breathed melody building to impassioned rhapsody is its strongest suit (and Chausson's Poème its closest relative); again one wants to hear Canteloube's other non-folk-based pieces. It is Graffin's recognition that each of these composers needs a different manner and palette that makes this collection so absorbing. Fischer and the Ulster Orchestra are admirable partners and the Ulster Hall's acoustic has been well caught. Such a combination of enterprise, imagination and responsive musicianship is rare indeed.