Lena Neudauer: Schumann's Complete Works for Violin & Orchestra

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There has been no shortage of Schumann performances and reissues this year, the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth, but this is a particularly interesting example. Something of a Schumann curiosity, the works performed here by the young star violinist Lena Neudauer are all from his later years and show a very different side of the romantic firebrand. The violin concerto, for example, composed for the virtuoso violinist Joseph Joachim in 1853, remained unpublished and unperformed until 1937. This was partly because of some belief of Joachim and Schumann's concert pianist wife Clara that the work reflected his increasing madness that was part of the illness that killed him three years later. Yet listening to it today, it has a certain Baroque stoicism that seems almost more rational and solid than his highly emotional earlier works. The Cello Concerto, Schumann's own arrangement for violin, written for Joachim after receiving little interest from cellists, and unplayed until the 1980s, is not so successful. Despite the 26-year-old Neudauer's outstanding technique, one can only wish for the tonal depth of a cello: it's perfectly pleasant, but not outstanding. On the rest of the album, though, she acquits herself brilliantly, avoiding the mawkish sentiment that his works can engender and playing with confidence and strength.