Jack Liebeck - Bruch: Violin Concerto No.3 & Scottish Fantasy (2014) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Award-winning violinist Jack Liebeck brings his impassioned tones, fulsome emotional display and formidable technique to the first of three albums of music by Max Bruch.

This programme presents one of Bruch’s most popular pieces for violin and orchestra, the Scottish Fantasy, alongside one of his least known, the Violin Concerto No 3 in D minor, Op 58. Anyone hearing Jack Liebeck’s performance may well wonder why this concerto has languished in the lumber room for so long—it has never been heard at the BBC Proms, for example. It was written for Joseph Joachim who gave the premiere in Düsseldorf and subsequently played the concerto in Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, Breslau, Leipzig, Cologne and London (for the Philharmonic Society).

The Scottish Fantasy in E flat major, Op 46 (or more correctly ‘Fantasia for the violin with orchestra and harp, freely using Scottish folk melodies’), was written in Berlin during the winter of 1879–80 for Sarasate and reflected the Spaniard’s more colourful personality. Although Bruch never visited Scotland, he was typical of German Romantics in having a fascination with the picture of the country painted by such writers as Walter Scott. For the Scottish Fantasy he drew on James Johnson’s voluminous folk-song collection The Scots Musical Museum.

Max Bruch's First Violin Concerto may be one of the most popular violin concertos in the repertory, regularly coupled on disc with the Mendelssohn or the Tchaikovsky, but Bruch never achieved anything like the same success with the two concertos that followed it. The Second, first performed in London in 1878 with Pablo de Sarasate as soloist, gets occasional outings, but the Third, which Joseph Joachim premiered in 1891, remains a real rarity as the sleeve note to this recording in Hyperion's Romantic Violin Concerto series points out, it s still never been heard at the Proms. While some of its themes have the kind of expressive generosity that runs right through the First, others seem much more foursquare and are underpinned by orchestral writing that is often stolid. Soloist Jack Liebeck and conductor Martyn Brabbins work hard to make the music come alive. Liebeck's playing is consistently fresh and his phrasing always imaginative, but it s a tough ask. They have much more success with the better-known Scottish Fantasy, in which a bit of restraint in the opening sections pays dividends when the big tunes are rolled out towards the close. *** –Guardian, 23/10/14

Those looking for an impressive new version of the Third concerto cannot go far wrong with Liebeck. –IRR, Dec'14

TRACKLIST

Violin Concerto No 3 in D minor Op 58
01. Allegro energico 18:09
02. Adagio 10:49
03. Allegro molto 09:37

Scottish Fantasy in E flat major Op 46
04. Introduction: Grave – 03:41
05. Adagio cantabile 05:18
06. Allegro – 06:40
07. Andante sostenuto 06:42
08. Allegro guerriero 08:39