Recording of the Week, Bartók's Violin Concertos from Renaud Capuçon

Whenever I listen to performances by the French violinist Renaud Capuçon, I'm unfailingly won over by both his beautifully sweet tone and his impressive virtuosity, and so it has been an absolute pleasure to get to know his new recording of the two violin concertos by Béla Bartók, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra under François-Xavier Roth.

Although neither published nor performed until more than a decade after his death, Bartók's first concerto was actually written while he was in his twenties, and stylistically speaking is quite different from the much later second concerto. It begins with just a single line for the soloist alone, gradually joined by more and more members of the orchestral strings, and then eventually the woodwind enter with the same melodic phrase that began the concerto. It's a magical opening, and the interplay between Capuçon's melancholic sound and the counterpoint of the LSO string section is a marvellous thing to behold.

Shaping every single phrase to perfection is conductor François-Xavier Roth, whose care over even the smallest facets of Bartók's dynamic markings is really remarkable: there's a moment in the first concerto where the solo violin and the orchestral first violins play the same line, but the soloist is marked forte throughout whilst the orchestra are instructed to begin pp with a crescendo. You can actually hear the shift in balance as the first violins catch up in volume with the soloist, until Capuçon is finally absorbed into the orchestral sound. It's the tiniest of details, but it makes such a difference.

There are all sorts of examples of this in the second concerto too, where Bartók frequently makes extensive use of layered dynamics. This is most prevalent in his woodwind writing, where for instance a piano clarinet solo might receive an interjection from a pianissimo flute, with horns playing ppp underneath! It’s a credit to Roth that he pays such meticulous attention to these markings, and also a testament to both the LSO and the excellent recording quality that such minute gradations are actually audible!

The second concerto is also full of intriguingly unusual timbres and performance techniques, such as asking the cymbals at one point to be played on the edge with the blade of a penknife, or requesting that a particular triangle roll be performed with a thin wooden stick rather than the usual metal beater. All of these moments are brought out wonderfully by the orchestra. Similarly, there's always an especial satisfaction to be had on hearing the hearty thwack of the Bartók pizzicato (where the string is plucked so hard that it snaps back and hits the wood of the instrument, so-named after his use of it in various pieces).

One of my favourite passages in the second concerto is near the end of the first movement, where eerie phrases for murky bass clarinet and bassoons, accompanying the solo violinist playing with quarter tones, lead into an outstandingly splendid cadenza from Capuçon, with double stops aplenty. Elsewhere there is real tenderness, particularly the start of the second movement, an affectingly poignant melody for solo violin with harp, timpani, and strings, which is sublime.

I must admit when I first put it on, I wasn't expecting to be quite so knocked out by the quality of the performances, but for me this is a stunner of a disc. With commanding musicianship from Capuçon, extremely intelligent and attentive conducting from Roth, and the LSO on the very best of their always magnificent form, this is undoubtedly one of my top discs of the year so far!