BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE - RECORD OF THE MONTH JULY 2007 (PROMS ISSUE)
"The Mullova-Dantone team is a winning one"
***** PERFORMANCE ***** SOUND
THE TIMES - Geoff Brown 29 June 2007 ****
The Ice Queen was the old journalistic tag for Viktoria Mullova. But it's better buried: the Russian-born violinist, now in her late forties, inflects her playing, as she inflects her career, with obvious emotional intensity.
She made her recording name in the late 1980s, playing the big concertos for Philips Classics. But then the men in suits got number-crunching. Result: the end of her contract and, in 2005, the start of a new life, with greater freedom, at the new label Onyx Classics, dedicated to giving artists as much control as they desire.
With Mullova, this means playing with gut strings on her precious 1750 Guadagnini. Her passion for period instruments is well known, but this new release of Bach sonatas for violin and harpsichord (BWV 1014-19) takes her deeper into Baroque repertory than before. The recording's quite close: you can't escape from the edge in her tone, especially in slow movements. Yet this Onyx two-disc set with the fiery Ottavio Dantone (mostly on harpsichord) equally celebrates Mullova's gentler side. The fourth sonata's opening largo purrs with restrained lyricism while the fifth's largo, gravely beautiful, sounds the depths. There's not a dull note anywhere.
Bach being Bach, Mullova's old knack for clinical excellence isn't wasted. Both players need extreme manual dexterity. Yet the counterpoint in these sonatas crackles with fire, and the relationship between violin and keyboard (are they colleagues or rivals, master or slave?) changes as often as the instrumental colours.
The kaleidoscope dazzles the most in the two additional sonatas for violin and continuo. In the first of them, BWV 529, Mullova sits back happily in a richly textured ensemble sound characterised by the extreme rhythmic thrust of lute and viola da gamba and the bright treble piping of Dantone's positive organ. No one could listen to this and still harbour the cliche of Bach's counterpoint being dry, the stitching of a sewing machine.
THE SUNDAY TIMES - UK - 10 June 2007 - STEPHEN PETTIT
Gone are the days when Viktoria Mullova was thought of as a cold sort of musician. That was always an undeserved reputation, based on her efficient technique. Her playing of Bach has always been special, an alliance of her gorgeous, imaginatively coloured sound with deep musical and spiritual insights. Here, in the six sublime sonatas for violin and harpsichord, she weaves her spell again, together with the harpsichordist Ottavio Dantone. The interplay between the pair speaks of an intimate artistic bond, their ensemble miraculously unanimous even in the hypnotic slow movements that characterise the set.
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY - UK - 10 June 2007 - ANNA PICARD
*****
Viktoria Mullova has found her natural home in Bach's Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord . The strength and sweetness of her sound
and her athletic bowing adapt well and although Ottavio Dantone sounds like Christoph Rousset without the decorative elan, their phrasing is hand in glove. Most exciting is the way Mullova has found new colours in the F Minor Sonata, and a sense of fun in the Trio Sonata, with gamba player Vittorio Ghielmi, lutenist Luca Pianca and Dantone on organ.
VIKTORIA MULLOVA/KATIA LABEQUE Recital
Viktoria Mullova (violin), Katia Labèque (piano)
Onyx 4015
This Onyx and KML (for Katia and Marielle Labèque) co-production highlights the advantages of artist-led programming on disc. Mullova and Labèque would hardly be permitted to record such an eclectic selection — Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne, Schubert’s Fantasy in C, Ravel’s Violin and Piano Sonata, and a Clara Schumann Romance — for one of the multinational labels at present. The playing is deeply rewarding in their glittering accounts of the Stravinsky suite — the 1933 transcription of Pulicinella — and the Ravel sonata, Mullova revelling in the jazzy glissandi of the central blues movement.
If one has heard more inward accounts of the Schubert, the virtuosity here is never in doubt, and the Clara piece is a charming rarity. Highly recommended.
**** Sunday Times - Hugh Canning - 12.11.06
"Rarely, the finest musicians so internalize a score that questions of traditional habits become moot. In Beethoven's Violin Concerto at Ravinia on Monday, conductor Paavo Jarvi and violinist Viktoria Mullova favored brisk tempos but managed to avoid the breathlessness in long forms that can be so numbing. Communication was paramount, and among conductor, soloist, and players of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the eye contact and body language yielded a coherent and engrossing performance.
Mullova has been a presence on world stages for 20 years. Oddly, this is her first appearance at Ravinia. Management would do well to snare her again soon.
She strolled on stage with calm confidence and easy poise, and once the fiddle hit the chin, she was all business. Her avoidance of interpretive perfume or musical aerobics could be misread as emotional distance, but nothing could be further from the truth. Mullova may be the most elegant, refined and sweetly expressive violinist on the planet.
Her sound is lustrous and suave with no hint of strain in any register. The structural point was achieved by tone, vibrato and endless shades of dynamics. In the second movement, the fiendish arpeggios in the stratosphere never sounded so effortless.
The finale is a dance that usually evokes a peasant stumbling out of a pub. With Jarvi and Mullova, it was graceful skipping in a meadow."
Michael Cameron, Chicago Tribune, August 10, 2005
"Mullova is no stranger to gut strings and period performance - she did it memorably in her Beethoven and Mendelssohn concertos with Gardiner, and now she's teamed up with one of the most sparkling of the Baroque bands around. They have the first word with their vigorous attack in the D major concerto (RV 208) and when Mullova enters, she pushes the tempo even more urgently. In the slow movement, she weaves arabesques around the highly decorated lute and harpsichord continuo with a rubato that's free and natural, before the finale sees a return to the energy of the opening. Three of the violinists from the ensemble join her in the B minor concerto, making a splendid team, unanimous in rhythm and ornamentation, and in lightness of attack in the central section of the slow movement.
For the other three concertos, Mullova's on her own. The C major is the least exciting with some formulaic sequences in its outer movements. But the D major (RV 234) has a delightful unpredictability about some of the harmonic progressions, and throughout the disc there's neve any lack of interest in the texture of the music, with variety of articulation and dynamic from the strings and weight in the continuo. The recording is bright and consistently detailed."
Performance *****
Sound *****
BBC Music Magazine, CD Review - Vivaldi Violin Concertos (Onyx 4001)
"In its early days the period instrument movement had to create its own stars. After all, what successful musician would have wanted to risk their reputation in that pioneering world of out-of-tune, scratchy strings and squeaks and gurgles from the wind department? These days a number of conductors, such as Simon Rattle and Mark Elder, regularly cross over to work with period bands. Solo instrumentalists are fewer in number, no doubt because of the different technical demands of the instruments, but some have plunged in, the most notable recent convert being the violinist Viktoria Mullova. Mullova's career makes a virtue of eclecticism - contemporary music, jazz, the formation of the Mullova Ensemble, and her current enthusiasm for playing Baroque and Classical music on period gut strings. This concert was not the first time she has appeared in London in "authentic" guise, but the programme included Beethoven's Violin Concerto and that grand peak of the repertoire is a work that most period violinists have shied away from. A couple of months ago I happened to catch a grainy, old, black-and-white TV film of Yehudi Menuhin and Colin Davis performing this concerto - supreme playing to be sure, but so slow and studied, almost stultifyingly so. How tastes change. Mullova's performance was everything that the best period music-making is about - quick-witted, alert, alive to every detail in the score. There was one passage in the slow movement that showed what a soloist of her stature can forge with period tools: for a minute or two the violin part seemed to hang motionless in the air, as pure and eloquent as a nightingale's song. For the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment this was a night off from duties at Glyndebourne, where it is busy with Die Zauberflöte under Charles Mackerras. Giovanni Antonini was the conductor here, relishing the abrasive sounds in the Beethoven and mostly whipping up a nice froth in the lightweight, effervescent pieces by Rossini and Boccherini that filled the evening."
Richard Fairman, 30 May 2005
"The prospect of an evening of Bach's violin music might be thought either intimidating or heavenly, but the angels were in attendance and the result was indeed very close to heaven. Mullova produced an incredible beauty of sound from the gut strings. [Her] double-stopping is special; the Andante of the A minor sonata, basically a song with accompaniment which most players labour over, had the vocal line floating free and the accompaniment sounding as if by another player."
Douglas Cooksey, Classicalsource.com, 21 May 2004
Bach recital with Ottavio Dantone/Wigmore Hall, 20 May 2004
"….which is why her performance is so special [Mendelssohn violin concerto]. Mullova transforms it into a soliloquy, introspective thoughts building on each other with great cumulative impact. I'd never heard it like this before, and I'm not sure I want to hear it any other way for a long time. [In the Beethoven violin concerto] Mullova is similar to Szymon Goldberg, lustrous and suave."
David Patrick Stearns, Andante.com, October 2003
Beethoven and Mendelssohn violin concertos Mullova/Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique/Gardiner (Philips 473 872-2)
"She [plays with] intimacy, sweetness and eloquence, often adding unsuspected, yet convincing, emotional shades to phrases, complementing her orchestral partners…this is definitely a must-hear CD."
Jessica Duchen, Classic FM Magazine, August 2003
Beethoven and Mendelssohn violin concertos Mullova/Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique/Gardiner (Philips 473 872-2)
"Bartok's Second draws you in gently, weaving a hypnotic web of sound. Viktoria Mullova's sensitivity to Bartok's palate of colours and moods was as near to perfection as it is possible to get."
Pauline Fairclough, The Guardian, 12 April 2003
Halle Orchestra/Elder/Bartok Concerto No.2
"So clear in vision, so brimming with technical surety, so musically inevitable was Viktoria Mullova's Thursday night recital that she almost lulled me into thinking that there was nothing arduous or rare about ascending to a state of artistic near-perfection. But violinists as good as Mullova don't come along every day."
Peter Dobrin, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 January 2003
Recital, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, January 2003
"From the start [Mullova's] urgency and determination to newly mint a familiar work were startling. Everything was purposeful and to the point; the directness of the slow movement had no room for specious sentiment, the finale capered in an almost diabolic way. It was spellbinding."
Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 25th July 2002
BBC Proms 2002: Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Orquesta Simfonica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya/Foster, 24th July 2002
"…Mullova's performances have an inner glow…a gypsy passion shone; in the polonaise finale Mullova showed some real cut and thrust."
Geoff Brown, The Times, 7 May 2002
Sibelius Violin Concerto, Philharmonia Orchestra/Alexander Lazerev, May 2002
"…the particular glory here was the burnished tone, seamless phrasing, matchless control and effortless expressiveness of Viktoria Mullova. A more perfectly formed performance would be hard to imagine."
Geoffrey Norris, The Daily Telegraph, 21 July 2000
BBC Proms, BrahmsViolin Concerto, BBC Philharmonic/Sinaisky, 20 July 2000
"This was one of those rare, fantastic evenings that almost beggar description… In Viktoria Mullova – whose technical perfection combines with matchless, uncompromising interpretative subtlety – [Bach's works for solo violins] find perhaps their ideal interpreter. I doubt anyone has tackled the mythically unperformable with such power, conviction or supreme success. To hear Mullova play Bach is, simply, one of the greatest things you can experience… technically Mullova was simply staggering… The lines interwove and overlapped with phenomenal clarity… The audience went beserk. No ovation was ever quite so richly deserved."
Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 10 April 2000
Wigmore Hall Recital, April 2000
"We used not to associate Mullova with Mozart. After this, one suspects, her name will be firmly linked to his… she sculpted the phrases of the Third Concerto with a combination of seraphic radiance and humane beauty… Mullova is an angelic diva (…), an Orphic figure whose playing seems to quell the orchestra into rapt submission…astonishing."
Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 28 January 2000
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Mozart Concertos Nos.3 and 4 (Play and Direct)