Benjamin Schmid, Daniel Raiskin, Lior Shambadal - Britten, Bruch, Benjamin: Double Concertos (2002)

The sole disappointment here is Bruch’s Double Concerto, originally for clarinet and viola. With violin replacing clarinet, the distinctive mid-range sonorities Bruch envisioned cannot register properly, and in this reading neither soloist sounds fully at ease with the material. The opening Andante, which is generally too slow, lacks overall cohesion, and throughout the slow movement you often miss the mellower timbres that Bruch’s prescribed instrumentation affords.

In Britten’s B minor double concerto (an early work from 1932 that the 18-year-old composer left in sketch form) Benjamin Schmid and Daniel Raiskin sound ideally matched, and they achieve excellent results. The recording balance (which places them slightly forward in the sound field) acts in their favor, and neither player seems unduly taxed by the demands of the solo writing. They play with great confidence, vigorously launching into Britten’s unusually sparse first-movement themes. For the finale, a mix of tarantella and Celtic jig, Schmid and Raiskin take a slower and more deliberate tempo than Kremer and Bashmet (on Erato’s recent world-premiere recording). The angular syncopations and unusual tonal effects seem more extreme at this pace, and orchestral accompaniment under Lior Shambadal readily surpasses the Hallé Orchestra’s for Kent Nagano on Erato.

Arthur Benjamin’s 1937 Romantic Fantasy was popularized by Heifetz and Primrose, whose RCA recording dates from 1956. Schmid and Raiskin turn in another assured collaboration, filling a long-standing need for a high quality digital recording of this fine piece. An impressive release, well worth having in spite of doubts over the Bruch.