Berthold Goldschmidt - Violin; Cello & Clarinet Concertos

Berthold GOLDSCHMIDT (1903-1996)

The Concertos

Cello Concerto,Clarinet Concerto,Violin Concerto

Yo-Yo Ma (cello)

Montreal SO

Charles Dutoit

Sabine Meyer (clarinet)

Komische Oper Orchestra

Yakov Kreizberg

Chantal Juillet (violin) 

Philharmonia Orchestra

Berthold Goldschmidt

Recording locations: Henry Wood Hall, London, December 1994 (Violin Concerto); Salle Wilfred-Pelletier, Place des Artes, Montreal, 'live', February 1996 (Cello Concerto); Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin Dahlem, January/February 1997 (Clarinet Concerto).

Review:

All three of Goldschmidt’s concertos are collected here in this latest Entartete Musik offering. Though the works themselves, composed in the Fifties but making some use of earlier ideas, came long after he was banned by the Nazis, they fit very well in this survey of suppressed composers and their music. Indeed, the Cello and Clarinet concertos inhabit a pastoral world far removed from Goldschmidt’s earlier style, and show how he was struggling to be accepted by the British musical establishment. The more objective language of his German period is still heard in the Violin Concerto, which he had begun sketching before going into exile.

It’s very good to have the Clarinet and Violin concertos on record for the first time, especially since they are perhaps better than the cello work. Still, Yo-Yo Ma is an expressive soloist in the Cello Concerto, and finds deep melancholy in the second movement, something Goldschmidt surely composed looking backwards. Sabine Meyer plays dazzlingly in the Clarinet Concerto and the Violin Concerto receives a loving performance from Chantal Juillet, who has done much to champion it. With three orchestras and three conductors, including the late composer himself, this disc is full of discoveries. 

John Allison (BBC)