Ulf Hoelscher - Spohr: Violin Concertos Nos. 1, 14 & 15 (1997)

With this record, Ulf Hoelscher and Christian Frohlich conclude their cycle of Spohr’s 15 numbered violin concertos (they have also recorded one of the three works without an opus number). Hoelscher has the elegance and the almost vocal quality with which Spohr’s violin writing is associated, but he can also master the virtuosity which is needed for the oddest work here, entitled Sonst und Jetzt, or “Then and Now”. There is something of an in-joke for violinists here. Irritated by the playing of the Norwegian virtuoso Ole Bull, whom Schumann regarded as the equal of Paganini, Spohr wrote this piece contrasting the lyrical qualities of the violin (in an expansive re-creation of the minuet) with a hectic Tarantella embodying all he disliked in the showy ‘modern’ style. The idea falls flat as a piece of music criticism, simply because Spohr produces rather a good Tarantella and integrates it ingeniously and not contentiously with his more lyrical music. Hoelscher could have made the point by playing the two kinds of music in more extreme fashion; but, if it is true that nothing is colder than the ashes of dead controversies, the more musical course is to play the work as he does, warmly and without parti-pris.
The Fifteenth Concerto is a rather more weary piece, in which Spohr goes through the motions expertly but without his full creative attention. Op. 1 is a prentice work (he was 18), obviously close to his beloved Mozart in spirit but also, so Clive Brown writes in Louis Spohr (Cambridge: 1984), heavily influenced by Kreutzer, Rode and especially Viotti. The best movement is the delightful Siciliano, which Spohr embellishes lovingly and which is played here with similar affection.