[SACD-R][OF] Beethoven & Mendelssohn Violin Concertos (Виктория Муллова / Viktoria Mullova, John Eliot Gardiner, Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique- ) - 2003 (Classical/Orchestral/Violin)

Mullova finds just the right amount of sparkle alternating with truly rich romantic feeling in the slow movement, & the whole makes for a superbly satisfying reading. Gardiner supports but doesn’t drown her out, & the results are collaborative music making at its very best.
~ Record Review / Steven Ritter, Audiophile Audition / 21. June 2014
AllMusic:
Viktoria Mullova & John Eliot Gardiner: Mullova, a strong-toned, intense, & very virtuosic Russian violinist living in the West, an individualist without a trace of idiosyncrasy & a expressivist without a trace of sentimentality, & Gardiner, a superb proponent of period instruments who’s out of his depths with passionate expressivity, an excellent exponent of Handel & Bach who’s over his head with Beethoven or Berlioz, a conducting collection of idiosyncrasies passing himself off as an interpreter & an amateur passing himself off as an individualist. What could they have to say to each other? At least in this 2002 recording of the Beethoven & Mendelssohn violin concertos, the answer is: nothing good. Mullova is reserved, restrained, & almost reluctant, her tone contracted, her intensity constrained, & her virtuosity constricted. Gardiner leads the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique in an instrumentally colourful but ultimately lax & soporific accompaniment. Together, Mullova & Gardiner turn in a pair of tepid & timid performances with only Mullova’s fiery & passionate performances of Ottavio Dantone’s cadenzas to the Beethoven concerto to make the disc worth hearing. Philips’ sound is a little too reverberant & oddly empty.
Gramophone review:
Interesting this, on a number of counts. Viktoria Mullova brings quite different qualities to bear on both works, chaste and unruffled in Beethoven, more demonstrably romantic in Mendelssohn, her vibrato marginally more intense and with subtly negotiated slides. Sir John Eliot Gardener is an attentive collaborator who in Beethoven’s first movement points up contrasts between a flowing legato and the forceful stamping of the timpani-inspired main idea, and lends added animation to various scale-like ascending passages. Ottavio Dantone provides flamboyant cadenzas, and the sum effect is of a considered, breathing encounter between the epic and the intimate, the full tutti tower blocks spasmodically dominating an otherwise serene landscape.
In Mendelssohn’s Concerto much thought has gone into fashioning the finale, taken at a leisurely tempo and with the orchestra audibly appropriating and distributing elements of the soloist’s opening phrase. Few performances make such a gripping feature of the movement’s dialogue element and Mullova again bows a bright, mercurial solo line. Gardiner takes Mendelssohn at his word in stressing the first movement’s Allegro molto appassionato, not by pushing the tempo (which he never does) but by applying precisely the right degree of weight and pressure to key tutti – much aided, incidentally, by the lowered pitch.
Extract from: www.gramophone.co.uk