KENNEDY, NIGEL

For listeners who collect recordings of comedy cadenzas for Beethoven's lyrical Violin Concerto, this 1992 recording by English violinist Nigel Kennedy performing with the Klaus Tennstedt conducting the NDR-Sinfonieorchester Hamburg will fit snugly on the shelf next to Gidon Kremer's classic recording of Beethoven's concerto with Schnittke's hilarious cadenzas. While Kennedy contents himself with performing the time-tested and true Kreisler cadenza in the opening movement, he apparently cannot help but perform his self-composed cadenza for the closing movement. So while most of Kennedy's performance, with its trademark combination of sweet tone and slick technique, is more than mediocre if not particularly interesting, Kennedy's cadenza is a riot of anarchistic anachronisms that have nothing to do with Beethoven's concerto and everything to do with virtuoso grandstanding. Klaus Tennstedt, who must have been paid an enormous sum of money to put up with Kennedy's monkeyshines, soldiers on, the very model of a unwilling accompanist, and the Hamburg Radio Orchestra plays as if it can't wait for the intermission. Coupled with Kennedy's better-than-average-if-not-especially inspired 1987 recording of Bruch's G minor Violin Concerto with Jeffrey Tate leading the English Chamber Orchestra, Kennedy's Beethoven is well worth hearing for listeners who like a hearty laugh. ~ James Leonard, AMG

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