Teenage violinist
Christian Li has thus far recorded mostly well-trodden repertory, and the
Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, certainly falls into that category. It is the centerpiece of
Discovering Mendelssohn, but the program is filled out with a variety of materials that trace the cosmopolitan
Mendelssohn's travels and also revive the 19th century type of concert, with orchestral and violin-and-piano pieces cheek by jowl, as well as a few audience-friendly arrangements of songs with and without words that include
Yinuo Mu's harp and
Xuefei Yang's guitar (in the charming concluding
Venetian Gondola Song). This shows growth on
Li's part, as does his confident rapport with the
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under
Sir Andrew Davis, but really, the key to the album's success is that
Li's performance of the
Violin Concerto stands out from the crowd. He gets but does not overdo the sentiment in the big tunes, and he has an attractive precision in the high notes.
Li places proper emphasis on the unusually placed cadenza in the concerto's first movement, loosening up and giving it improvisatory flair. He includes pieces by
Mozart,
Bach, and
Schubert, all of which have more or less definite connections to
Mendelssohn; this, too, supports the effort to create the atmosphere of a concert of
Mendelssohn's time. An exciting young player takes a definite step forward with this enjoyable release. This album landed on classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2023. ~ James Manheim
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