Edgar Meyer: Violin Concerto
Samuel Barber: Violin Concerto
Hilary Hahn, Violin
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Hugh Wolff, cond.
SONY SK 99029.

My enthusiasm for the Meyer Violin Concerto was not immediate, and my first
approach to it was not without reservation.  Although Meyer is a classical
composer, as well as a bass player, one might not know that from the way
SONY has been marketing some things he did with Yo Yo Ma.  It helped me to
learn that the germ for the composition came out of a meeting between Hahn
and Meyer when they played Bach together.  My first acquaintance with the
concerto was not love at first hearing, either.  The utterly simple and
unabashedly tonal melody which opens the work, though striking, did not
strike me as one that would stand up to repeated hearings.  (It was to take
repeated hearings to convince me I was wrong.) The Barber was not going to
be my favorite recording of that piece either, I decided.  At any rate, I
put the disk aside after a single hearing and took it out again only after
attending a Milwaukee Symphony concert at which Hahn performed the Elgar
concerto and, as an encore, a dazzling presto by Bach.  Hahn has a fine
tone, and stood up valiantly to a large orchestra in the Elgar.  (She then
survived an extended session of autographing CDs in the lobby; I did not
stay, but the violinist husband of someone I work with waited an hour on
line for this!)

So what have I found in repeated hearings of this recording? To get the
Barber out of the way first, I still don't think this is ever going to be
my favorite version, except perhaps for the headlong finale, which I've
never heard played better.  There are also a couple of passages in the
first two movements which caught my attention.  But on the whole this
performance strikes me as restrained and maybe a bit facile--the orchestral
playing particularly.  Since the concerto is one of the most intensely
lyrical works ever written, I prefer playing which brings that out fully.
Others may find this version more listenable on account of its restraint.

The Meyer is neoclassical in style, progressing from a quiet, simple,
perhaps elegiac (Meyer thinks so) theme to greater complexity and
considerable force before it is done.  In his notes the composer mentions
the pull of two tonal centers away from the G# he begins with.  Aside
from a hushed passage at the beginning of the second movement, I was not
personally aware of much use of harmony but there is effective use of
counterpoint throughout the piece, and the solo violin sometimes floats
high above a lower accompaniment, strikingly in the case of passages for
bassoon and brass.

The range of this music is impressive.  In the ten minute opening movement
the quiet opening is succeeded by a throbbing, jagged passage for lower
voices prior to development of the main theme, which proves strong enough
to support traditional development.  There is some spritely, angular
melody.  Early in the second movement there is an almost trill-like passage
for winds and lower strings (that's not quite right but I don't know how
better to describe these figures), over which the violin stands out.  There
are two passages in which the soloist has to play a slow melody on one
string and a faster theme on another string.  If the composer's notes had
not told me this I could not have told you that a second violinist was not
involved, however.  There are only two movement but the second (16 minutes)
includes elements of what could have been called a scherzo (an Appalachian
sounding passage--which does not go on too long) and a rousing finale with
driving, slashing rhythms.  Before the end there is a hushed passage, a
brief cadenza and a return of the "Appalachian" theme.  Neoclassicism
lives!

In her notes, Hilary Hahn calls this work,"a superb and challenging
concerto by one of the most original composers writing in the late
twentieth century" and a work of "spirit, power, dramatic range, and
lyrical beauty." Although one might well question the perspective of
one so young, for whom the work was written, I, for one, would not now
disagree with her.

Jim Tobin