Violin Concertos by the Chevalier de Saint-Georges

Portrait of Saint-George by Mather Brown on the cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of A440 Arts)

Some readers may recall that this season’s PIVOT Festival, presented by San Francisco Performances this past February, provided the Catalyst Quartet (violinists Karla Donehew Perez and Abi Fayette (alternating in leading from first chair), violist Paul Laraia, and cellist Karlos Rodriguez) with an opportunity to present the music of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. This Friday Naxos will release its third CD of the violin concertos that Saint-George composed between 1773 and 1777. These amount to fourteen concertos published under seven opus numbers, each consisting of two concertos. The concertos on the new release are taken from Opus 1, published in 1773, and Opus 7, published in 1777. As usual, Amazon.com has created a Web page for processing pre-orders.  “Watch this space” for further information about the two preceding volumes!

While Saint-George is a contemporary of the First Viennese School composers, there are few signs that he had any substantive connections with any of them. The only observation of significance on his Wikipedia page is that he gave the first performances of the six symphonies that Joseph Haydn composed for the Concert Olympique. Since the number of violin concertos that Haydn composed is more than a little modest, one would not expect that he would have had an influence on any of Saint-Georges’ concerto compositions.

All four of the concertos on this new album are given decidedly engaging accounts by violinist Fumika Mohri, performing with the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice under the baton on Michael Halász. Given that the number of recordings of any of the Saint-Georges violin concertos is relatively modest, the best one can do is to approach the four concertos on this album in the context of other violin concertos composed in Europe during the eighteenth century. My feeling is that all four of the concertos on this album present an engaging graciousness. Spirits are, for the most part, high but not necessarily as playful as the rhetorical turns one encounters in the music of Haydn (or any of the other Viennese School members).

I suspect that I shall be happy to revisit these concertos in the future; but, for now, I am more concerned with catching up with the six concertos found in the first two volumes to have been released!