Trusler Korngold CD ‘Hotter than Heifetz?’
Matthew Trusler’s recent release on Orchid Classics of the Korngold and Rósza concertos has been attracting much critical praise. In the December edition of BBC Music Magazine the recording was given 5 stars and awarded ‘Music Choice’ by reviewer Julian Haylock.
‘Hotter than Heifetz?’: BBC Music Magazine : December 2009
‘So all-encompassing in their musical intensity and technical mastery are Heifetz’s 1950s premiere RCA recordings of these two virtuoso swashbucklers that for many years hardly anyone else was prepared to take them on. Although happily this is no longer the case, no one has so far been entirely successful shaking off the influence of the man popularly dubbed the ‘violinist of the century.’ Full marks, then, to Matthew Trusler who not only integrates with the orchestral textures in both concertos in a way that was anathema to Heifetz, but in the Korngold takes the first movement’s Moderato mobile marking at face value (Heifetz and most of his successors are closer to Allegro con fuoco ed espressivo). As a result we can savour the extraordinary detail and subtle dovetailing of Korngold’s orchestral writing as never before as Trusler weaves in and out of the textures with the heightened instincts of a born chamber musician.
No less compelling is the Rózsa, which has always seemed short on the kind of emotional warmth and splendour familiar from his epic film score to Ben-Hur. (In this respect Castelnuovo Tedesco’s I Propheti Concerto – another Heifetz first – sounds more like Rózsa than Rózsa himself.) Yet Trusler, devotedly supported by Yasuo Shinozaki and his Dusseldorf players, imparts an expressive warmth to the music that points up its real point of stylistic departure: Bartók’s Second Concerto. The disc is rounded out in style by three Heifetz specialities – Ponce’s Estrellita, Benjamin’s Jamaican Rumba and Foster’s Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair – in skilful Peter Ash orchestral arrangements, played by Trusler with sensitivity.‘
Other praise includes:
‘Matthew Trusler is an excellent soloist who has clearly studied these works in no little detail. He is a splendid virtuoso, and has the measure of these scores throughout; his phrasing of Rózsa’s first movement second subject is superb and his sense of repose in the slow movement of the Korngold and the manner by which he launches into the finale’s high spirits in that work are wholly exemplary. This is really outstanding playing, of a kind that would surely have earned the praise of the composers themselves – and of Heifetz, I dare say, could he be persuaded to express such an opinion.‘
International Record Review, November 2009
‘[Korngold] At the opening of the concerto these two new versions sound like an Academy Award-nominated star performance versus a B-movie melodrama. Matthew Trusler the subtle sensitive actor venturing out on an emotionally committed journey ...’
‘[Rósza] Trusler plays with an apt combination of muscle and tonal sleekness’
Strad Magazine, December 2009
