Johann Baptist Vanhal was a well-established composer in Vienna as the young Mozart was coming on the scene in points west, and Mozart actually admired one of the three violin concertos performed here. That's not a surprise, for these works, written at least several years before Mozart's own violin concertos, are of the same type: formally balanced, melodic rather than fiery or especially virtuosic, gentle and sweet, yet without coming much under the influence of French style. They don't have the compactness of Mozart's ...
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Johann Baptist Vanhal was a well-established composer in Vienna as the young Mozart was coming on the scene in points west, and Mozart actually admired one of the three violin concertos performed here. That's not a surprise, for these works, written at least several years before Mozart's own violin concertos, are of the same type: formally balanced, melodic rather than fiery or especially virtuosic, gentle and sweet, yet without coming much under the influence of French style. They don't have the compactness of Mozart's concertos. The most impressive is the Violin Concerto in B flat major that closes this album; its nearly nine-minute opening movement lays out large gestures in the orchestra and effectively atomizes them in the violin solos. The brisk finales are more logically organized than the opening movements, benefiting from Vanhal's evolving symphonic logic. The strongest feature of the performance is the playing of Japanese violinist Takako Nishizaki, who has specialized in little-known...
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