Brahms and Mozart: Works for Violin, Cello & Orchestra

"This new release from Nimbus offers what is for me a highly attractive combination of two favourite double concertos…I initially played this disc while a knowledgeable music-loving friend was present and we both increasingly pricked up our ears as we listened, first because it soon became apparent that these are very fine accounts, the partnership of violin and cello exuding joy and exhibiting remarkable homogeneity in both works. Secondly, the engineers have achieved a really bold, open acoustic that has a spacious, concert-hall atmosphere with plenty of air round those soloists and the orchestra… A major point of interest in the Mozart here is that the cello plays the part originally notated in D major for a viola tuned scordatura to (i.e. a semitone up, such that it actually sounds in E♭ major), without octave transposition. The darker, mellower sound of the cello comes as a refreshing alternative to the usual, slightly wirier viola…The brief, brilliant, coda to the sonata-form first movement sees Čepický and Kanka playing in complete harmony. The way they in turn lean into the plangent melody of the Andante is deeply moving; it is one of Mozart’s most sombre and touching tunes.

Vavřínek’s accompaniment is discreet, sensitive and dynamically highly reactive, advancing and receding – sonically, as it were – with the grace of a dancing partner, always leaving the soloists prominent but supported. The sheer verve and attack of the orchestral playing speak for the conductor’s ability to galvanise his players, although he is also sometimes a little more restrained than Massimo Belli with the Nuova Orchestra Ferruccio Busoni in the violin/viola version and the resultant elegance is wholly satisfying. I shall keep this recording along with the aforementioned violin and viola coupling to be played when I fancy hearing this double concerto played “with a twist”." Ralph Moore, MusicWeb International 

"The Mozart is one of the finest vehicles for the poor viola, which in the wider solo repertory has little else than Harold in Italy and a few concertos. Here, though, the viola solo is taken by the cellist Michal Kanka. I was wondering if he would transpose the part down, but in fact he does not; all is in the original range, placing some of the writing—already quite high for the viola—in the cello’s upper atmosphere. One justification I can offer is to remind us that Mozart must have sensed a problem with the viola’s ability to project the music. He wrote the viola part a half step lower than concert pitch, requiring the soloist to tune the instrument sharp, thus achieving a brighter sound. Kanka handles the high writing very well, and balances are fine. In this case the substitution works. So, we have two obstacles, but ones we can justify if we wish.

It is certainly an enjoyable recording with both Cepicky and Kanka playing very well, and the chamber orchestra under Stanislav Vavrinek plays with assurance. I’ll only say that one of my oldest friends from graduate school was a violist who played the Mozart. He later became a violist with one of the Big 5 orchestras. In order to preserve the friendship, discretion suggests I shouldn’t tell him about this release!"  ALTHOUSE, American Record Guide