Dvořák Violin Concerto and Bruch Scottish Fantasy – Accard

Salvatore Accardo made his reputation on Paganini — those hair-raising traversals of the caprices that still turn up on desert-island lists — and there is something of the virtuoso’s cool nerve in everything he does, even here, in repertoire that asks for warmth before dazzle. Eloquence has reissued this pairing: the Dvořák concerto with Colin Davis and the Concertgebouw from 1978, the Bruch Scottish Fantasy with Kurt Masur and the Leipzig Gewandhaus two years later. Two orchestras, two conductors. Accardo threads through both with the same burnished, slightly aristocratic tone.

Start with the Dvořák, since that’s the disc’s calling card. This concerto has never quite shaken its reputation as the unloved middle child of the great Romantic violin concertos — not as symphonically inevitable as the Brahms, not as immediately winning as the Tchaikovsky. Dvořák fussed over it for years, sent it to Joachim, who admired it but never played it in public. The piece needs an advocate willing to let its rhapsodic, almost improvisatory structure breathe rather than forcing it into concerto-shaped boxes.

Davis is exactly that kind of advocate. His Dvořák pedigree runs deep — those symphony cycles remain benchmarks for a reason — and he conducts this score the way you’d want a favorite uncle to tell a long story: unhurried, warm, alert to every digression. The Concertgebouw woodwinds cover themselves in glory in the first movement’s central episode, where the soloist’s line gets passed hand to hand like a lit candle — flute first, shadowing, then the oboe taking over the tune with that grainy, autumnal color this orchestra does so well, before the violin re-enters with its grave, songful return. Gorgeous stuff. Chamber music smuggled into a concerto.

Accardo’s playing throughout is silken, unforced, the vibrato applied with real discretion. His dynamic control in the first movement especially impresses — he can spin a phrase down to almost nothing without losing pitch center or the sense of forward motion. The slow movement’s wisps of melody float by with an easy, unaffected lyricism; the folk-dance episode that interrupts it, brass-led, has real lift.

I keep thinking of Josef Suk with Václav Neumann, or further back, the mono account Suk’s teacher-generation forebears left us — recordings where the finale’s furiant rhythms catch fire in a way that here stays merely warm. Accardo phrases the rustic closing movement intelligently, rhythmically alert, nothing sloppy about it. But the adrenaline the best performances generate — that sense of peasant abandon just barely held in check by the bowing arm — never quite arrives. Davis, so simpatico elsewhere, seems content to let the tempo settle rather than press. Walter Susskind, in his old release, understood something about keeping this movement sectionally taut without ever letting the pulse sag. That comparison is unfair to almost anyone, admittedly. But it’s the standard the piece invites.

The Bruch is the more purely enjoyable listen, oddly enough — less canonical, less freighted with expectation, and Accardo sounds completely unbuttoned in it. The Scottish Fantasy is a strange, lovable piece, four movements strung loosely around Scottish folk tunes Bruch encountered through Sir Walter Scott’s novels and various collections, never having set foot in Scotland himself until after writing it. There’s a harp part that gives the whole thing a faintly bardic, quasi-improvisatory cast, and Masur’s Gewandhaus players lean into that atmosphere with real relish — dark, weighted string tone, a slight autumnal murk to the sound that suits the piece’s misty invocation of the Highlands rather better than a brighter, more polished orchestra might.

Accardo, freed from having to compete with a canonical masterpiece, simply sings. The slow introduction has an improvisatory hush to it, almost recitative-like; the “Fisher’s Song” that follows has real tenderness, phrased with an unforced rubato that never curdles into sentimentality. The finale, built on “Scots Wha Hae,” goes with genuine swagger — Accardo’s bow-arm suddenly finds exactly the brio that eluded the Dvořák finale.

Sound quality across both recordings holds up remarkably well for their vintage. Philips house engineering of this period was reliably warm, detailed without being clinical, and the Eloquence transfer doesn’t add any obvious digital glare. String tone retains its bloom; the woodwind solos in the Dvořák register with real presence.

Is this a first choice in either work? For the Bruch, quite possibly — it’s a genuinely distinguished, unfussy account that deserves to be better remembered. For the Dvořák, I’d still point collectors toward Suk, or toward Perlman’s version with Barenboim for sheer visceral heat, reserving Accardo and Davis for those days when you want the piece’s lyric tenderness foregrounded over its Bohemian fire. A satisfying disc, generously filled, handsomely played. Just don’t expect it to set your hair on end.