Joshua Bell Paganini

Paganini: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 6; antabile for violin & piano / guitar in D major, Op. 17, MS 109; The Carnival of Venice*

Joshua Bell, violin and conductor

Academy of St Martin in the Fields, orchestra
*Simon Mulligan (piano)
Sony G010005915476N

A reviewer who spends years moving between genres and recordings risks a kind of critical fatigue, where superlatives are handed out too readily and end up meaning very little. That's why I keep a mental scorecard, weighing tone, technique, ensemble and interpretation against one another before I let an adjective like 'outstanding' anywhere near a review. Most of the time this keeps me honest.

Occasionally, though, a recording arrives that makes the whole exercise redundant, because restraint would simply be dishonest.Joshua Bell's account of a work that has terrified violinists for two centuries is exactly that case.

Bell first tackled Paganini's Violin Concerto No. 1 at the age of thirteen, and returns to it now with the benefit of several decades' perspective. As he puts it: "Just a decade after [the composition of] Beethoven's iconic Violin Concerto, Paganini pushed the violin's physical capabilities further than anyone had before. Despite its obvious technical difficulty, this concerto is rich with musical challenges – it is extraordinarily operatic, straight out of The Barber of Seville, full of wit, charm, and drama. As the soloist, you get to play every character! This is not just a 'showpiece,' it is a masterpiece in its own way."

That sense of theatre runs through the whole performance. Directing the Academy of St Martin in the Fields from the violin, Bell brings a fresh, unforced authority to music he could easily play on autopilot after all these years. The solo line darts and dances with real rhythmic bite, and the orchestra matches him step for step, never merely accompanying. The virtuosic passages fizz and dazzle, but it's the melodic writing, soaring and unhurried, that lingers longest. There's an impulsive, almost improvisatory joy to the reading, superbly caught by the engineering: the dynamic range and sense of space Bell talks about in his own notes, which are all present and correct. Charm radiates from every player, the cadenza is a genuine highlight, and the whole thing is driven by a vivaciousness that never tips into showing off. High-octane playing, but never at the expense of musicianship.

The Cantabile in D major, arranged by James Stephenson, offers a change of temperature: a gorgeous, unhurried miniature played with real finesse, the orchestra's accompaniment graceful to the point of being divine.

The disc closes with Paganini's Carnival of Venice, a compendium of everything that makes this composer's music terrifying to lesser violinists: scales, runs, double-stop harmonics, arpeggios. None of it troubles Bell in the slightest. He captures the gypsy inflection and the constant tempo shifts with real passion and intensity, and if this music is comparatively easy fare for a player of his calibre, he still gives it every ounce of conviction.

A triumph.