Arabella Steinbacher | Beethoven & Lentz: Violin Concertos

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Just adding another Beethoven Violin Concerto?

Only two and a half months after I heard Arabella Steinbacher playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto at the inaugural night of Poland’s Beethoven Easter Festival, in Warsaw’s Filharmonia Narodowa, with Sinfonia Varsovia conducted by Jacek Kaspszyk, and received by the audience with a standing ovation, she played it once more in Luxembourg with the same considerable success, this time accompanied by the Luxembourg Philharmonic under its Music Director, Gustavo Gimeno. The Polyhymnia engineering specialists captured it ‘live’ for this new Pentatone release. 

Is it just adding another Beethoven Violin Concerto? I don’t think so. One more? Yes. Just another? Not at all. This concerto, being ‘the mother of all’, will continue to be recorded by any violinist that matters, sometimes even twice or more. Arabella is such a star violinist. In a personal note in the booklet, she observes: “I am fascinated every time by what it triggers in me and how it inspires me to constantly find something new within it “. That is probably why we, dedicated listeners, will never get enough of it. 

Poetry in optima forma.

In people’s striving to classify composers according to period and supposed going trends, Beethoven is a ‘classical’ composer, demanding a corresponding style in performance. Luckily, such rules of ‘correctness’ are not always respected. I’ve heard Mozart being played with lots of ‘romance’ to the immense pleasure of the audience. And so, in her rendition of Beethoven’s violin concerto, Arabella draws a large degree of exquisite romantic poetry from the score. The second movement, Larghetto, becomes a deeply moving experience. With her Giuseppe Guarnerius del Gesù violin and careful bowing, she lays bare her soul in the singing high notes. This is indeed poetry in optima forma. 

Even in the virtuoso moments, like, for instance, the cadenzas, taken at daring speed and with apparent effortless eloquence, her compassion shines through in unmeasurable quantity, leaving the audience on edge, as only the best have the ability to evoke. 

Lentz’s dramatic vision of humanity pays tribute to Arabella’s versatility.

Ms Steinbacher is known for her extraordinarily wide and varied repertoire, reaching from Bach to Bartok and beyond, all played and recorded to great acclaim. When the Luxembourg composer, George Lentz, was jointly commissioned by the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, to write a violin concerto for Arabella Steinbacher, he must have realized that with Arabella’s wide musical interest and technical abilities, he was given a free hand to compose his vision of humanity without limits, thereby paying tribute to a violinist he holds in high esteem as a violinist and a sensitive human being.

As the concerto ‘…to beam in distant heavens…’ is new to us all, I suggest reading the liner notes before listening. It is not an easy work. Not for a composer, nor for a soloist, nor for an orchestra, and neither is it for a listener. It is dramatically disturbing and destabilising. In her notes Arabella Steinbacher says: ”This (other worldly) piece makes me feel as if I’m in floating in outer space, looking down on the earth from this endless expanse, how much we humans have always allowed ourselves to be seduced by hatred and violence and how disrespectfully we often behave towards each other and the environment.” In other words, Lentz mirrors humanity in all its negative aspects without, however, neglecting its ultimate capability of ‘absolute love’.

Going beyond the impossible.

With this in mind, one is better prepared to understand and follow Arabella’s translation of these conflicting moods in a reading that will take your breath away. Eminently supported by Gustavo Gimeno and his musicians, Arabella Steinbacher takes the listener on an unsettling journey. I don’t know of any other violinist whose virtuosity can go beyond the impossible. A major feature is the lengthy Cadenza absorbing much of Arabella’s stamina, letting her Cremona, 1718, known as the „ex Benno Walter”, do its marvellous work.

I would need much more time to come to grips with a composition that brings more than innovation, experimenting, modernism, or whatever term a composer might want to use to describe his work; it is a mirror of reality, many will be afraid to look into. Let us pay tribute to George Lentz as well!

(As a note of warning: The concerto starts with a strong whack on the bass drum!)

The spectacular advent of Luxembourg’s National Orchestra.

A couple of years ago, Pentatone embarked on recording the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg (as it was called in those days) a series of audience-appealing works by a variety of composers, Gimeno conducting. In my view, one of the best was Franck, Symphony in D minor and Symphonic Variations with Denis Kozhukin at the piano. It instantly brought fame to an orchestra of a tiny European country

I’ve followed this orchestra from the days it still played in the Hall of the Luxembourg Conservatorium. The late Bramwell Tovey and his successor, Emanuel Krivine, have done much to lift the local band into an orchestra that could compete with any other regional formation. However, ever since Gimeno took over in 2015/6, the orchestra, with an increased complement of 98 internationally recruited musicians, reached a level that won’t make them blush in the face of most European orchestras. 

Two plus one makes a happy fourth.

I’ve always been a convinced advocate of sound production at the highest possible resolution, preferably in multichannel. It lends a recording the extra dimension it needs. Not only in terms of clarity but also as regards the often underestimated importance of dynamics. Pentatone is one of the pioneers of this format, and I’m happy to note that, notwithstanding adverse market pressure, they continue to use the services of Polyhymnia (Erdo Groot) whenever needed. It adds up to the simple truth that an outstanding soloist, with refined orchestral support, plus excellence in sound engineering, will make the fourth element in the chain, the listener, extremely happy. 

Blangy-le-Château, Normandy, France.

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