Music for Violin and Orchestra from Both Ends of the 20th Century

I am a big fan of the Naxos (budget) label's American Classics series several times. My collection was augmented by birthday gifts that included a lot of pieces I didn't know existed.

The longest -- the first and last -- pieces on a disc of very disparate music for violin and orchestra written in America during the twentieth century were already familiar to me. I heard Joshua Bell (who also plays the violin within the movie) play John Corigliano's Chaconne from "The Red Violin" before the movie was released (it was released in 1999), saw/heard the movie (which I found disappointing) and have the soundtrack of the movie with Joshua Bell. And I have the first recording of John Adams' 1993 Violin Concerto, performed by Gidon Kremer, a violinist with whom I have become very disenchanted in recent years.

I had not heard of violinist Chlöe Hanslip before this disc came to hand. The Adams concerto makes more sense in her performance. I don't think that I have heard anyone else play George Enescu's flashy first Romanian Rhapsody (lasting less than two and a half minutes, it does not make much of an impression; the orchestral work dates from 1901). Hanslip does sound something like Isolde in the Fantasia on Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" that Franz Waxman wrote (Waxman also arranged the Enescu). Perhaps not as big a sound as Isoldes emit on stage, but very lyrical.

It would be very difficult to produce a more lyrical sound than Joshua Bell does, but Hanslip does just fine in the Corigliano that was written for Bell. Chaconnes have a repeating bass pattern and Corigliano put the often fetching melodies from the violin playing in the movie (not just on the soundtrack, there is a lot of playing of the red violin in the movie) atop a repeating bass in interesting ways.