¿Los 20 mejores violinistas?

Publicación inicial

De vuelta de vacaciones, os dejo este interesante artículo publicado en la web http://www.sinfinimusic.com.

La violinista Ariane Todes, miembro del equipo de la revista The Strad, ha escogido los que ella considera los mejores (de los que existen grabaciones)

Es una selección de alguien que realmente conoce a muchísimos intérpretes, y hay alguno que ni siquiera conocía. Llama la atención positivamente la inclusión de un buen número de mujeres y la de un jazzman puro como Grappelli.

Joshua Bell (b.1967)

Joshua Bell may be one of the most famous and glamorous violinists on the planet right now, as likely to be seen playing for Dancing with the Stars or judging Miss America as gracing the stage of Carnegie Hall. But listen to his playing and you discover a paradox: an old-fashioned soul, full of innocence, tenderness and yearning. Nothing is forced or heavy – there’s exquisite delicacy and poetry in his use of colour and inflection, whether in concertos or the sonata repertoire. Maybe his international celebrity is proof, if needed, that the general public understands great playing when they hear it. In recent years he’s expanded his work to include leading the Academy of St Martins from the concertmaster chair.

Recommended recording: Tchaikovsky , Wieniawski, Brahms, Schumann: Violin Concertos.

Giuliano Carmignola (b.1951)

Italian violinist Giuliano Carmignola began his career winning the Paganini Competition and performing 20th-century works but these days concentrates on Classical and Baroque music, often focusing on Italian composers. Within the conventions of this repertoire he brings such grace and natural elegance in the fast music that the works feel newly minted, improvised, even, rather than being any sort of historic artefact or academic exercise. In slower music, such as the violin solos of Bach’s cantatas, there’s a raw sonority and a depth of feeling that is profoundly affecting, whether or not you are a fan of historically-informed performance.

Recommended recording: Vivaldi: Late Violin Concertos.

James Ehnes (b.1976)

You only have to look at the breadth of Canadian violinist James Ehnes’s discography for evidence of his musical curiosity and openness. Over the last ten years his recordings have ranged from Bartók, Barber, Bruch and Bach to Dallapiccola, Debussy, Dohnányi and Dvořák, with many in between. Each is performed with the appropriate respect for the composer’s style — his ElgarConcerto received rave reviews, notoriously difficult for a non-English player to achieve. There’s an old-fashioned sincerity and lack of fussiness to his playing, although he can strut his virtuosic stuff with the rest of them. He is also committed to chamber music, regularly performing with his group, the Ehnes Quartet.

Recommended recording: Barber, Korngold, Walton: Violin Concertos

Ivry Gitlis (b.1922)

You either love Ivry Gitlis’s playing or you hate it – there can be no in between. Everything is extreme – tempos, intensity, phrasing, emotion. His playing is never safe or generic, such is his desire to communicate, to provoke a response. He was born in Israel but left to study in Paris aged 12, going on to learn with Enescu and Ysaÿe, two of the towering violinists of the age, and then Flesch. Maybe because of his individuality he never quite had the performing and recording career he could have had. But he was probably too busy playing with John Lennon and the Rolling Stones, appearing on French television, acting in Truffaut films, and working as a UNESCO ambassador to care.

Recommended recording: The Art of Ivry Gitlis - Violin Concertos.

Stéphane Grappelli (1908-1997)

Stéphane Grappelli is on this list not only as a representative of the jazz idiom but because of his fantastic technique and one of the sweetest, sunniest sounds of all. As well as swinging, his playing is highly expressive – maybe not surprising when he’s playing the vocal lines of standards, but he had an instinctive sense of musical phrasing. He started the violin relatively late, at 12, and largely taught himself, although he did spend three years at the Paris Conservatoire. He founded the innovative Quintette du Hot Club de France with Django Rheinhardt, toured the world and created many successful collaborations, including with Yehudi Menuhin. He is regarded by many as the father of jazz violin.

Recommended recording: Menuhin & Grappelli: Friends in Music.

Ida Haendel (b.1928)

Even when she plays these days — well into her 80s — while you might not find technical perfection, you will find the intensity of sound, instinctive musicianship and the highly personal voice that mark Ida Haendel's earlier career. Born in 1928 (or 1923, according to some sources) in Poland, Haendel graduated from the Warsaw conservatoire and went on to study with Flesch and Enescu, two of the leading teachers of the day. Until recently she maintained a busy international touring schedule and was the first Western player to perform in China after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Her broad repertoire included 20th-century works such as the Britten and Walton concertos.

Recommended recording: Sibelius: Violin Concertos.

Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987)

Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that Heifetz’s playing was cold. It’s incandescent, thrilling, and deeply human. But the impassivity and focus of his stage demeanour confused people, and his perfection in the most fiendish of music seems unbelievable, even now. Born in Vilnius in 1901, Heifetz was a prodigy, able to play the Mendelssohn Concerto by the age of six. He developed a complex personality, as prodigies invariably do, full of conflict and paradoxes, and some people feel that he ushered in a new era of a brash playing style. But for most violinists, Heifetz remains at the head of the pack.

Recommended recording: Jascha Heifetz: Violin Concertos.

Bronisław Huberman (1882-1947)

It’s amazing to think that in 1896, Huberman performed the Brahms Violin Concerto in front of the composer himself, to the great man’s approval. If that pinpoints him in the timeline of music then so does his playing, with its portamentos, wide vibrato and sometimes counter-intuitive (or personal, depending how you look at it) phrasing. Technically his playing might not stand up well against that of today’s stars, and yet there’s so much charm to his performances, such a sense of intention. He also carries a certain moral authority for his actions in setting up the Palestine Symphony Orchestra as a way to save nearly 1,000 European Jews from Nazi concentration camps.

Recommended recording: Tchaikovsky & Beethoven: Violin Concertos.

Janine Jansen (b.1978)

Dutch violinist Janine Jansen is a force of nature, with technique to burn and a vast range of colour at her disposal. Her playing seems to come straight from the heart — passionate and impulsive, but intimate and charming, too. Having grown up in a family of musicians maybe it’s not surprising that her musical intelligence seems so instinctive. She has played and recorded with some of the finest orchestras in the world, although her repertoire thus far has been relatively conservative. She is also a committed chamber music player, and has set up her own chamber music festival in Utrecht.

Recommended recording: Mendelssohn & Bruch: Concertos & Romance.

Leonidas Kavakos (b.1967)

Although he had won prizes in several international competitions by the age of 21, Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos took his time to get the public attention he deserved. For a while he was something of a secret among violin lovers, with astonishing videos of his youthful performances of Paganini and other virtuosic works doing the rounds. His technique remains invincible, and with more profound repertoire he brings a seriousness of intent, an enormous range of timbres and impeccable attention to detail. He also holds the distinction of being the only performer to have been sanctioned by Sibelius’s family to record the composer’s Violin Concerto in its first, more demanding, draft.

Recommended recording: Beethoven: Violin Sonatas.

Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962)

Having graduated from the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 12, Austrian-born Fritz Kreisler trained to be a doctor and subsequently served on the Austrian front line in the First World War. Perhaps these life experiences lent his playing the deep sense of wisdom and humanity that shines through. It speaks so directly, with such grace, conjuring a different time. He was never one to practise much, but you wouldn’t know it from his recordings of virtuoso works, and his use of vibrato and portamento is effortlessly tasteful and expressive. He also composed many charming encore pieces and the most commonly played cadenza to the Beethoven Violin Concerto.

Recommended recording: Kreisler Plays Kreisler.

Gidon Kremer (b.1947)

Latvian-born Gidon Kremer kicked off his career by winning most of the major international violin competitions going. Since then his playing has done anything but conform. He brings a creative, improvisatory spirit to whatever he plays, whether in crafting meaning or searching for sound qualities — he uses one of the broadest palettes of today’s violinists. This probing quality has led him to explore modern repertoire and he has premiered works by Pärt and Schnittke among many others. Since 1997 he has also directed Kremerata Baltica, a group of young players with a similarly broad range of repertoire.

Recommended recording: Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto.

Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999)

Of all the child prodigies in this list, Yehudi Menuhin is probably the most remarkable. Einstein is supposed to have said on hearing him, ‘Now I know there is a God in heaven.’ Listen to Menuhin’s 1932 recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto — made at the tender age of 16, with the 75-year-old composer conducting — and you understand why. The violinist is able to identify completely with the wisdom and profound sentiment of the older man. He brought this imagination to the wide range of works and styles he championed. Later in his career his playing lost its technical confidence, but he devoted himself to many humanist, pedagogical and musical causes.

Recommended recording: Beethoven & Mendelssohn: Violin Concertos.

Viktoria Mullova (b.1959)

It has been fascinating to watch Viktoria Mullova’s career unfold since her defection from Soviet Russia in 1983. At that point she had won three of the top international violin competitions and arrived in the West with a standard repertoire and a brilliant Russian technique, full of power and authority. As time has gone by, her playing has become more relaxed and intimate, while maintaining a musical thoroughness, and her programme choices have widened. She has explored jazz and world music styles in recent recordings and in 2009 recorded the Bach Sonatas and Partitas on a period instrument with gut strings, revelling in the distance she had come from her Russian training.

Recommended recording: Beethoven & Mendelssohn: Violin Concertos.

Ginette Neveu (1919-1949)

If anyone tries to describe violin playing as masculine or feminine, point them to the Paris-born violinist Ginette Neveu. Her style is as forceful and weighty as that of any of the male players in this list, making a nonsense of the description. It’s also subtle, nuanced and highly personal. We’ll never know the full extent of her range and talent, for she died tragically young in a plane crash over the Azores on the way to a concert in 1949. But in her 30 short years she had established an international concert career. Fortunately, there are enough recordings of concertos and shorter works to know what was lost in that plane.

Recommended recording: Brahms & Sibelius: Violin Concertos.

David Oistrakh (1908-1974)

Oistrakh was a heavyweight player with a big, brassy sound well-suited to the concert repertoire. He premiered many 20th-century concerti, including those by Kabalevsky, Khachaturian and Shostakovich. Given that Shostakovich wrote his two violin concertos for Oistrakh and that the player was involved in revising them, his performances of the works could be seen as definitive. Like many great violinists of his generation, Oistrakh was born in Odessa, Ukraine. In the 1930s he won many international competitions, but due to the war and subsequent political fall-out, much of his career happened in Russia. He made up for this with international touring from the 1950s onwards.

Recommended recording: Mozart & Beethoven: Violin Concertos.

Itzhak Perlman (b.1945)

Listening to Itzhak Perlman play encore pieces is like listening to Louis Armstrong – you can’t help but smile, such is his generosity of spirit, humour and charm. But he also has range, power and technical brilliance in the great concertos. His gloriously sweet, warm tone has been copied by generations of students but few can match his instinctive sense of music and his charisma. He was born in Israel and came to fame in the US at the age of 13 when he was picked by Ed Sullivan to play on his show, subsequently remaining in New York. In the 1960s he was part of the musical clique of Barenboim, Zukerman and du Pré. These days he performs occasionally but is mainly devoted to teaching.

Recommended recording: Paganini: 24 Caprices.

Gil Shaham (b.1971)

The career of Gil Shaham began in dramatic fashion, when he was called in at the last minute to replace Itzhak Perlman in a concert series in London in 1989. He has never looked back, having built up an extensive discography and a steady international touring schedule. His current project is recording violin concertos of the 1930s, the first volume including works byBarber, Berg, Stravinsky, Britten and Hartmann. The repertoire provides a rich seam for his romantic (but never self-indulgent) charm and the warmth of his core tone. And with his complete security of technique, he is always willing and able to take risks.

Recommended recording: 1930s Violin Concertos Vol.1.

Joseph Szigeti (1892-1973)

Of all the players here, Szigeti was probably the least virtuosic — not for lack of ample technique, but because he just became less interested in showy repertoire and never really possessed a huge sound. His humility, poetic intelligence and integrity towards the composer shines through in smaller repertoire. He premiered much new music, including works by Prokofiev, Bloch and Rawsthorne. Ysaÿe was inspired to write his solo sonatas after hearing Szigeti performing Bach, and his lifelong friendship with Bartók led the composer to write his First Rhapsody for him. The recording of the two performing the work together along with other pieces is probably one of the greatest musical partnerships on record. Szigeti’s beautifully written texts about music and violin playing provided another outlet for his intellectual and curious nature, especially as the effects of age took their toll on his playing.

Recommended recordings: Bach: Six Sonatas & Partitas for Violin Solo.

Pinchas Zukerman (b.1948)

Where his peer Itzhak Perlman’s playing is all sweetness and joy, there’s a brooding quality to Pinchas Zukerman’s playing, a seriousness which, when he feels like it, reaches into the profound. He also has one of the best tone production set-ups in the business — his bow hand is a model of efficient power. Like Perlman, he came from Israel as a teenager to study in New York with Ivan Galamian and made the US his home, although he has recently been working in Canada, mainly as a conductor. He is also one of the finest viola players in the world. But don’t expect him to play Baroque music in authentic style — he has been known to rail against historically-informed performance.

Recommended recording: The Mozart Sonatas for Violin and Piano.