Peteris Vasks'
Violin Concerto ("Distant Light") was commissioned by
Gidon Kremer in the mid-'90s and remains one of his most popular works. Perhaps it is surprising that it has taken the composer nearly 30 years to follow it up with a second, but it has been worth the wait. The
Violin Concerto No. 2 ("Evening Light"), which here receives its world premiere from violinist
Sebastian Bohren, holds a consistent mood throughout, with all three movements marked Andante in one way or another and a strong dose of
Vasks' characteristic lush sound, halfway between the minimalism of
Arvo Pärt and
Vasks' other Baltic contemporaries and the richer textures of
Witold Lutos¿awski. There are few of the excursions into folk rhythms or cadenza-like passages present in the earlier concerto. With
Bohren's opulent sound, the work is sure to please fans of this most Romantic of the minimalists, but also innovative is the inclusion of
Schubert's
Rondo Brillant for violin and piano in B minor, D. 895, here played in an arrangement for violin and strings by
Paul Suits.
Bohren may have thought of this as a contrast to the
Vasks concerto and the
Meditation that brings the curtain down, but actually, as interpreted by
Bohren and conductor
Sergej Bolkhovets with the
Münchener Kammerorchester, the little work, with its Schubertian blocks of harmony, reveals an unexpected kinship with
Vasks. The feeling is intensified by the sound from the Himmelfahrtskirche in Munich as rendered by producer
Andreas Neubronner, which turns both
Vasks and
Schubert into "holy minimalism" in spite of the fact that neither is a sacred work. One can find this an interesting idea even without buying into it fully, and it is just one attraction on an album that has several of them. ~ James Manheim
