News and Reviews

Review: sinfonia ViVA with Ilya Gringolts, Violin
Assembly Rooms, Derby, 27th Jan 2010

After their notable contributions to last year's Mendelssohn festivities, sinfonia ViVA look set to do the same for Schumann in 2010. After an incisive account of the overture to Mozart's Don Giovanni, Ilya Gringolts joined them for Schumann's Violin Concerto. This has been under a cloud from the moment Clara Schumann and Brahms decided it was not to be published, but it has been gaining a bit of a foothold in the repertoire in the last twenty years or so.

It will never challenge the Beethoven, Mendelssohn or Brahms concertos for supremacy, but it's an attractive work that effectively demolishes any lingering received wisdom about Schumann's declining powers. With his secure technical command, Gringolts explored the first movement's byways without letting the tension sag, and produced some lovely singing tone in the second movement. The steady tempo adopted for the final may have robbed it of a little of its vitality, but soloist and orchestra had a delightful way with the musi'’s more whimsical side.

ViVA also unveiled the latest in their Orchestral Shorts series of commissions. Vapour Trail, by Cardiff-born Larry Goves, is an attractive piece conceived, as the title suggests, very much in linear terms. The opening quiet cor anglais idea and long string theme generate more active textures, in which lines slide apart and move together again, punctuated by short explosive gestures.

After the interval, conductor André de Ridder directed a wonderfully crisp and energetic account of Brahms' Serenade No 1. The glowing serenity they brought to the slow third movement beautifully balanced the bouncy vitality elsewhere.

Reviewed by Mike Wheeler