This is Alina Ibragimova’s and Vladimir Jurowski’s second collaboration on disc, following their 2012 accounts of the Mendelssohn concertos, and as on that recording Jurowski’s choice of orchestra suits the repertoire to perfection: if the Mendelssohn benefited from the airy buoyancy of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the grit and gravitas of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia ‘Evgeny Svetlanov’ are no less ideal here.
Composed almost 20 years apart, the two violin concertos by Dmitri Shostakovich were both conceived with the great violinist David Oistrakh in mind and dedicated to him. Shostakovich completed Concerto No. 1 in 1948, at a time when he had fallen out of grace with the Soviet authorities and it seemed uncertain if the work would ever be performed in public. This is reflected in the concerto which begins with a dark and solitary violin song over gloomy cellos and double basses.
In 1967 Shostakovich wrote to Oistrakh, telling him about the completion of his Violin Concerto No. 2. The composer’s health had been failing for several years, and only the year before he had suffered a heart attack. In several of his late works there is a preoccupation with mortality, and the concerto exhibits a similar dark, introspective tone.
Here is Alina Ibragimova just to show you the amazing level of her skill and musicianship:
