Alison Luthmers baroque violin
60:58
Rubicon Classics RCD1140
It is not very often that I listen to a CD from beginning to end when I am planning to review it. This beautiful recording held my attention longer than that – after a while, I sensed that I had heard some of the music before and realised that (because I was listening on the distributor’s JukeBox facility) it had seamlessly started over.
I have never knowingly heard Alison Luthmers play before; I say that because the Canadian-American violinist plays with most of Scandinavia’s leading ensembles, including the Bellevue String Quartet (whose recordings I shall now seek out!) She is at pains to thank her recording engineer (Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir) “for the gorgeous sound”; whilst I 100% agree that this is by far one of the cleanest capturing of a baroque violin I have ever heard, the fact is that she had to conjure up that captivating sound in the first place. This is no mean feat; in all of my previous encounters with Roman, I had never conceived of him as such a creative master of the instrument. These “assaggi” have variously been described as essays, experiments, or even studies; whatever meaning the composer had in his mind, they are substantial works – Luthmers plays one in three movements that last over 11 minutes, two in four movements (almost 12 and 17 minutes respectively), and opens her recital with one in five movements that takes over 21 minutes! I was blissfully unaware of time passing, what with the beautiful sound, Roman’s surprisingly (and I still don’t know why I hadn’t realised this before) accomplished writing, and just sheer enjoyment of a beautiful new thing.
There were days not so long ago that that very feeling was the whole point of the HIP “early music” world, so it is refreshing to know that there are still undiscovered masterpieces (every baroque violin student should be made to play these as a counterfoil to Bach and Biber!) out there with fantastic musicians (and record companies!) prepared to champion them!
I’d better stop before I get a repetitive strain injury of the exclamation mark… Buy this – you won’t regret it. If we still had a stars system, this would be 6 out of 5 🙂
Brian Clark