Has political correctness infiltrated the pages of concert programmes? “These days it’s easier to appreciate the piece as ‘different’ rather than simply ‘sub-standard’,” we were informed in the note for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s performance of Schumann’s violin concerto, as if concepts of good and less good are no longer allowed when discussing music.
Let’s just say, then, that Schumann’s concerto is problematic, and that over the 84 years since it was exhumed from the archives in Leipzig and given its belated premiere, many violinists have attempted to solve those problems. But if there’s anyone today who can show that the work belongs in the pantheon of 19th-century violin concertos, it’s surely Isabelle Faust, who was the soloist for the OAE’s performance, with Antonello Manacorda conducting.
