Helen Grime: Violin Concerto (World Premiere Recording) [DSD EP]

This enticing recording of the world premiere should win plenty of friends for Grime’s Violin Concerto, played brilliantly by Malin Broman, joining the legacy of powerful 21st-century British violin concertos.

The Concerto is formed of a continuous movement, divided into three main sections with interlinking passages of strikingly fantastical music between them. Grime often uses the orchestra to expand the solo part to create what she has described as a “three-dimensional effect” and the feel at times is rather like high-powered chamber music. The first movement immediately compels the listener’s attention with a series of lightening interjections between orchestra and soloist which is not a dialog exactly, more an exchange of unadapted statements: the woodwind in triplets and quintuplets, the violin “answering” in five bar sets of accented triplets. The music develops and becomes more complicated until Broman delivers a cadenza, playing at triple forte with breathtaking power, only for the orchestra to intervene after six bars. These interactions are excitedly repeated until it feels the violin has worn the orchestra down. The orchestral speed drops and it becomes quiet, “very still” as the score directs, whilst the cadenza continues at the section’s initial speed. It’s ingenious, highly effective writing, brilliantly realized here by Broman and the Swedish Radio Orchestra under Daniel Harding’s expert direction.

There is no defined end in the traditional sense; and so the close is a massive challenge to he soloist/conductor bond, here absolutely impeccable. It is remarkable to think this is a live performance; such is he accuracy; and yet we hear that concert hall element in the undeniable frisson throughout.
I honestly believe this is one of the major violin concertos of our time. How lucky we are to have Helen Grime to create this; and how lucky she, and we, are to have such world-class interpreters. Unmissable.