Nicholas Kenyon 

Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 1, Symphony No 3, Christian Tetzlaff (violin), Vienna Philharmonic/Boulez

The gorgeous but transparent music of Szymanowski, in Boulez's capable hands, is a contender for disc of the year, says Nicholas Kenyon
  
  


Amazing. At 85, Boulez has already extended his magisterial coverage of 20th-century repertory to Janácek and now he the exotic, sensual music of Karol Szymanowski, making it sound utterly gorgeous but transparently clear. His partnership with Tetzlaff and the flexible Vienna Philharmonic is perfectly suited to the lavish orchestration of the First Violin Concerto with its dazzling cadenza and the oriental chromaticism of the choral Third Symphony is shaped and clarified. He seems to place these Szymanowski pieces of 1914-16 in a post-Ravel Daphnis, post-Stravinsky Firebird mainstream of impressionistic modernism. On a bonus CD, Boulez discusses the music, in three languages! Definitely a disc of the year.

 

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