Sur YouTube, il n'y a malheureusement pas encore grand chose en ce qui concerne James Ehnes (aucun extrait du Concerto d'Elgar, en tout cas).
On peut toutefois se faire une petite idée de sa maîtrise du violon au travers de la vidéo suivante, où il interprète sur un Guarneri de 1698 l'Etude-Caprice Op. 18 No 4 de Wieniawski (arr. Fritz Kreisler) :
YouTube - James Ehnes Wieniawski Etude-Caprice Op. 18 No. 4[/url]
Jacques
On est bien loin d'Elgar...
Hélas non (Originally Posted by thierry h
), Thierry
.
Mais ce que vous dites me donne une nouvelle piste à explorer.
Je suis justement en train de réécouter ce Concerto d'Elgar... Que c'est beau!
Jacques
CertesOn est bien loin d'Elgar.... Mais sinon il y avait du Bach (par Ehnes sur YouTube), ce qui nous aurait peut-être emmenés encore plus loin d'Elgar...
Jacques
Bonjour,Merci Jacques!
Ce violoniste est formidable je vais écouter ce disque! Mais connaissez vous la version de Hahn et Davis que je trouve très belle ( la version ) ?
thierry
Je connais Hahn, Perlman, Kennedy I, Kennedy II, Ehnes (Live), Shaham (Live)... Néanmoins je recommande en priorité Chung/Solti, une version méconnue mais proche en esprit de l'enregistrement du compositeur lui même. A part cette version et quelques versions historiques, je trouve que la plupart des version modernes sont plus ou moins en contresens avec l'oeuvre. Mais évidemment c'est un humble avis bien subjectif.
Cordialement,
Bruno
Votre avis est toujours très précieux, Bruno
Comparée à celles de Bartok et de Berg, la musique d'Elgar appartient évidemment à un tout autre "univers". Mais cette violoniste et ce chef m'ont suffisamment convaincu dans ces autres concertos (engagement, musicalité, etc.) pour que je m'intéresse aussi de très près, en tout cas dès que je le pourrai, à ce qu'ils ont fait dans le Concerto Op. 61 d'Elgar
Bien cordialement,
Jacques
Je sais, c'est très gonflé de ma part et probablement assez vain aussi. D'autant plus que le long texte qui suit est tout en anglais et que j'ai la flemme de le traduire en français (
Cela dit, si vous vous intéressez à Sir Edward Elgar, si vous comprenez l'anglais et si vous êtes sensibles à l'humour britannique, il n'est pas impossible que vous preniez un certain plaisir à le lire. Il a été écrit par Sir Arnold Bax vers 1943, quand il s'est agi pour lui d'évoquer dans ses mémoires ("Farewell, My Youth") les contacts qu'il avait eus avec son illustre confrère. Pour moi en tout cas, "ça vaut de l'or"
Voici ce texte :
Coming down to breakfast at Ivybank one autumn morning in 1898, I found my father seated at table, his favourite Standard open between his small and beautiful hands and looking quite excited. "You should read this, my boy," he exclaimed before I could take my seat. "A new English composer has turned up and the paper says that he is something like a genius!"
He handed me the sheet, and I read a long and highly laudatory account of the first performance of "Caractacus."
This was my earliest introduction to the name of Elgar, for although he was already past forty and not unhonoured in his native Worcester, I do not think that his work was at all known to the public at large, or that much of it had yet been played in London.
Eagerly I procured the vocal scores of "Caractacus" and "King Olaf," and was soon one of the composer's most enslaved admirers. Two years later to this admiration was added reverence, for "The Dream of Gerontius" took utter possession of what religious sense I have.
For its summer holiday in 1901 the family went to Malvern. There, incidentally, my parents were warned by a medical charlatan, preposterously in charge of a local hydro, that my heart was in so advanced a state of disease that I could not live more than a few weeks. There was matter for consternation indeed, but it could not be left at that and a "second opinion" was sought, with the result that next day on the Malvern College ground I was banging a cricket ball to the boundary and running hard between the wickets for my century.
In Malvern lived an Academy friend of mine, one George Alder, a horn-player, a wag of no mean order, and well acquainted since boyhood with Elgar. I saw much of him during that month of August, and one day he perturbed and delighted me with the proposal that we should walk over to Birchwood, the woodland cottage where "Gerontius" had been scored and where the composer was still living, and pay him a visit. We set out on a sultry afternoon, our heads in a cloud of gnats which we tried to disperse by energetic smoking, and as we approached the unpretentious but charming cottage I almost regretted my temerity in coming. My tongue and throat were dry and my heart a-flutter with nervousness, which was part allayed and part aggravated when we were told by a maid that Mr. Elgar was at present out somewhere in the woods. But he would be back at tea-time or soon after, and meanwhile would we sit in the garden where the mistress would join us at once ?
The composer's wife, a pleasant-looking fair-haired lady, with— it struck me—rather an anxious manner, welcomed us very kindly in her gentle, slightly hesitant voice. Almost at once she began to speak enthusiastically and a little extravagantly about her wonderful husband and his work.
She spoke of her Edward's early struggles for recognition and referred to the rudeness of well-known literary men to less-known musicians, relating how Elgar in his young days had ser to music a lyric by that notorious tough, Andrew Lang, and thinking to do the courteous thing, had sent the poet a copy of the song as soon as it appeared in print. Lang's curt response consisted of one sentence, "I don't read my poems when set to music." Alder and I here made suitably horrified noises, and our hostess was continuing, "On the other hand Dr. Richard Garnctt was quite charming about 'Where Corals Lie,'" when I became aware of footsteps behind me. "Oh, here he is!" cried Mrs. Elgar, and I rose and turned with suddenly thudding heart to be introduced to the great man. Hatless, dressed hi rough tweeds and riding boots, his appearance was rather that of a retired army officer turned gentleman farmer than an eminent and almost morbidly liighly strung artist. One almost expected him to sling a gun from his back and drop a brace of pheasants to the ground.
Refusing tea and sinking to a chair he lay back, his thin legs sprawling straight out before him, whilst he filled and lit a huge briar, his rather closely set eyes meanwhile blinking absently at us. He was not a big man, but such was the dominance of his personality that 1 always had the impression that lie was twice as large as life. That afternoon he was very pleasant and even communicative in his rumbling voice, yet there was ever a faint sense of detachment, a hint—very slight—of hauteur and reserve. He was still sore over the "Gerontius" fiasco at Birmingham in the previous autumn, and enlarged interestingly upon the subject. "The fact is," he said, "neither the choir nor Richter knew the score." "But I thought the critics said ..." I started to interpose. "Critics!" snapped the composer with ferocity. "My dear boy, what do the critics know about anything?"
Now I have always been curious about other people's workaday methods, how long it takes them to get through a job and suchlike matters, and so Elgar was asked what number of pages of full score represented his weekly average whilst he was working on "Gerontius." "Oh! about forty, I suppose," he replied carelessly.
Having at the time no experience whatever of the Egyptian labour that is orchestration, this quantum seemed to me surprisingly small; but now, after all these weary years at the grindstone, I realize that he might have spoken more boastfully. Particularly if he meant that he completed his pages in all that scrupulous detail which so admirably characterized everything he wrote.
Knocking out his pipe, he suggested that we might like to have a glance at a huge kite that he had recently constructed. We duly appreciated the lines of this mighty toy, though as there was no wind its excellencies could not be practically demonstrated, and were then led into a small wood adjoining the garden where we found Elgar's little daughter sitting on a swing. "Showing rather more leg than I care about, young woman!" remarked her father crisply. Thus admonished, the child dutifully slipped to the ground and I paused to say a few words to herwhilst the composer passed on with Alder. The latter told me as we were returning to Malvern that during my short absence Elgar had asked him what were my musical ambitions. On being told that I intended to devote myself to composition Elgar had made no comment beyond a grimly muttered, "God help him!"
As a personal contact that youthful experience of him proved for me the best of Elgar. A shy captious man, he suffered neither fools nor anyone else with consistent gladness. His manner to others was a matter of mood, as many found to their disconcerted embarrassment. The next occasion on which I was to meet him was at the solitary festival of the short-lived Musical League held in Liverpool in 1909. He was there, in high spirits and his most genial temper. To my pleasure and surprise he called out on seeing me, "I do not need to be introduced to Mr. Bax again." Later at dinner he startled me by shouting up the table, "Mr. Bax! was it you who told me the story of the two-and-ninepenny crab?" whatever that recondite-sounding jape may have been.
In the following year I was invited for the first time to send in a work for performance at a Queen's Hall Promenade Concert, and when I went to Sir Henry Wood for a preliminary run through he told me (to my intense pride) that it was none other than Elgar who had recommended him to take up my work. It seems that he never forgot my visit to Birchwood (I think his days there counted asthe happiest in his tormented life, and he kept a special regard for anyone who had seen him in those surroundings).
In later years I had two or three notes from him—one of them after I had forwarded the score of a string quartet on which his name appeared as dedicatee. He wrote "that he liked the look of it," but never came to hear it. The plain truth is that (apart from Richard Strauss whom he strangely professed to adnu're) he was totally uninterested in, and probably ignorant of, the work of any of his contemporaries or juniors.
On the death of his wife he became cranky and embittered, lost his religious faith (which had engendered a masterpiece), composed no more, and adopted the irritating pose of being interested in any topic radier than music.
The last time I met him was on his birthday in 1933. That evening Toscanini had given an ever-memorable performance of the "Enigma" Variations, and Harriet Cohen and I, with one or two others, repaired to the Savoy Grill after the concert for supper. There we discovered Elgar, characteristically surrounded by actors, Norman Forbes and Allan Aynesworth amongst them. Harriet, of whom Elgar was really very fond, rushed up to him and began vivaciously and charmingly to congratulate him upon the anniversary and the evening's wonderful music. With—as I thought— rather ridiculous affectation and ungraciousness, the old composer turned to his actor-friends and, spreading out his hands in mock mystification, exclaimed, "What on earth are these people talking about?"
Jacques
Je me suis rendu compte - mais beaucoup trop tard pour pouvoir les corriger - que mon "lecteur/reproducteur de texte" avait laissé bon nombre de petites coquilles dans ce qui figure en anglais dans mon précédent post (il suffit parfois d'une tache microscopique sur une lettre pour que tout le mot "déraille")
Mais bon. L'essentiel y est, et je ne pense pas que ça aura préoccupé grand monde
Jacques
Je me suis rendu compte - mais beaucoup trop tard pour pouvoir les corriger - que mon "lecteur/reproducteur de texte" avait laissé bon nombre de petites coquilles dans ce qui figure en anglais dans mon précédent post (il suffit parfois d'une tache microscopique sur une lettre pour que tout le mot "déraille")
Mais bon. L'essentiel y est, et je ne pense pas que ça aura préoccupé grand monde
Jacques
ahhhhh voilà... le steak and kidney piedont vous donniez la recette avait vraiment un drôle de goût
, tout s'essplike!
Bon sans rancune, hein...
Encore heureux, s'agissant de recettes anglaises, que ne figurait pas dans ce texte (écrit par Bax -- puisse-t-il me pardonner, du paradis des musiciens où il se trouve, les quelques défaillances de mon système "automatique" de reproductionahhhhh voilà... le steak and kidney pie
Bon sans rancune, hein...
En fait, dans cette histoire, les distingués gentlemen qu'étaient le tout jeune Bax et le moins jeune Elgar se sont juste contentés d'un traditionnel five o'clock tea dans le jardin de ce dernier (isn't it?)
Jacques
Encore heureux, s'agissant de recettes anglaises, que ne figurait pas dans ce texte (écrit par Bax -- puisse-t-il me pardonner, du paradis des musiciens où il se trouve, les quelques défaillances de mon système "automatique" de reproduction
En fait, dans cette histoire, les distingués gentlemen qu'étaient le tout jeune Bax et le moins jeune Elgar se sont juste contentés d'un traditionnel five o'clock tea dans le jardin de ce dernier (isn't it?)
Jacques
J'ai des amis écossais qui seraient capables de vous faire bouillir et servir avec de la sauce à la menthe
(il paraît que c'est très bon, comparable à de l'andouillette, et que le whisky se marie très bien avec; je n'ai pas encore réussi à goûter!)
bon on s'éloigne d'Elgar, un peu...
bon on s'éloigne d'Elgar, un peu...
Good heavens! J'aurais dû prendre la précaution d'écrire au moins recettes britanniques
Cela dit... yes, we are wandering from Elgar a little bit.
Mais j'y reviendrai bientôt, peut-être avec de la musique de chambre
Jacques
Bon à vous tous vous allez finir par me convaincre de jeter une oreille à Elgar... (ce qui est précisément le but de ce genre de discussion).
Jettes donc les deux ... tu ne devrais pas être déçu ....
(en fait ça m'est déjà arrivé mais... euh... j'ai pas dû faire assez attention, quoi)
A part la composition de quelques oeuvres de jeunesse dans ce domaine (NB : c'était bien avant que le papa d'Arnold Bax ne dise à son fiston alors âgé d'à peine 15 ans : "You should read this, my boy. A new English composer has turned up and the paper says that he is something like a genius!
Il y revint pourtant en 1918, soit très tard dans sa carrière, avec coup sur coup trois oeuvres très nobles et très belles : sa Sonate pour violon et piano en mi mineur Op. 82, son Quatuor à cordes en mi mineur Op. 83 et son Quintette pour piano et cordes en la mineur Op. 84.
Je n'ai encore aucune version de la Sonate. Mais pour le Quatuor et le Quintette j'ai ceci :
On ne présente plus, je crois, l'excellent Maggini String Quartet, qui m'avait déjà comblé dans les Quatuors à cordes de Bax notamment (deux albums parus chez Naxos aussi).
Or les mêmes qualités se retrouvent dans son interprétation de ces oeuvres d'Elgar. Quand j'ai vu que c'était cet ensemble (avec le pianiste Peter Donohoe pour le Quintette) qui était au programme, je n'ai pas hésité une seconde avant d'acheter ce très beau CD. Et je ne l'ai évidemment pas regretté
Jacques
Bonjour Jacques,
j'ai déjà du l'écrire quelque part, mais dans le magnifique quatuor en mi mineur (qui au mqoed fait jeu égal avec La Mer et la 3e Symphonie de Brahms
Eh bien, ThéoBonjour Jacques,
j'ai déjà du l'écrire quelque part, mais dans le magnifique quatuor en mi mineur (qui au mqoed fait jeu égal avec La Mer et la 3e Symphonie de Brahms
Non seulement je ne la connaissais pas, mais je n'ai pour l'instant aucun enregistrement (
Voilà donc pour moi encore beaucoup de plaisir en perspective, même si c'est au détriment de mon porte-monnaie (qui je dois dire "en a pris un coup"ces derniers mois
En tout cas merci d'avoir fait cette recommandation, qui intéressera aussi beaucoup d'autres amateurs de cette splendide musique. Un répertoire encore bien trop peu connu "en dehors des îles" (comme disent certains Britanniques)
Jacques
Je m'en réjouis: pour mémoire c'est ce disque (Abeille et ici cumulé j'ai l'impression de l'illustrer pour la dixième fois, m'enfin on me pardonnera je pense).
Chez les fières archères, c'est pas cher (voui Lebewohl, je sais, mes rîmes sont pourries).
C'est parfait, Théo
Et en plus, les CDs de la série "helios" chez Hyperion sont en effet à prix très doux
Jacques
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