Of the great Hollywood film composers,
Miklós Rózsa was most adamant about maintaining his concert career, and he succeeded in writing music that did something other than string cinematic scenes together into a longer score. His
Violin Concerto, Op. 24, was completed in 1954 and premiered by the
Dallas Symphony Orchestra with the work's dedicatee,
Jascha Heifetz. An amusing story holds that when
Heifetz called
Rózsa to agree to perform the work, the composer, thinking the call was a practical joke by a friend, responded, "If you're
Heifetz, I'm
Mozart!" Nevertheless, the work, with its icily precise, soaring lines, was deeply shaped by
Heifetz's style, and the violinist gave
Rózsa technical input. Sample the finale, where rousing, foot-tapping rhythms grow into a real virtuoso essay, with acres of double stops in the score. The work has been recorded before, but it's not common, and this performance by violinist
Roman Simovic is ideal, with conductor
Simon Rattle supplying the requisite speed and energy in the playing of the
London Symphony Orchestra.
Bartók's
Violin Concerto No. 2, Sz. 112, is of course a more common item for which listeners have many choices. But the performance here, this time with
Kevin John Edusei as conductor, is again very strong;
Simovic shows a convincing way with
Bartók's late lyric style in the slow movement variations. This style has been disvalued often enough by self-serving modernists, but maybe it's time to admit that movements like this one contain some of the most beautiful music of the 20th century, and
Simovic gets this. The violinist has been around for some time in upper chairs of the
London Symphony, yet he has been heard only occasionally as a soloist, and from the evidence here, he has much more to offer. It's also interesting to hear these two works together; the
Bartók illuminates how
Rózsa was forming a late Romantic Hungarian style that admitted modern influences, and one wishes others had picked up the ball and run with it. With the
LSO team's usual fine live sound, this is an important Hungarian music release. ~ James Manheim
