Sueye Park: Goldmark and Sibelius album review – Korean violinist’s silvery tone is ideal for Goldmark rarity

A relative rarity in the concert hall, Karl Goldmark’s 1877 Violin Concerto has nevertheless fared reasonably well on disc. South Korean violinist Sueye Park pairs it here not with another 19th-century staple but with miniatures by Sibelius: the bucolic Suite from 1929, the Two Serious Melodies, written at the outbreak of the first world war, and two of his six Humoresques.

Sueye Park: Goldmark and Sibelius: Works for Violin and Orchestra

The composers crossed paths when the Finn studied briefly under Goldmark in 1890s Vienna, but despite the polite whiff of folk music that hangs about the Hungarian’s concerto, it has little in common with Sibelius’s unvarnished Nordic nationalism. It makes the album something of a game of two halves, though there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

The Goldmark might take its time, but it’s consistently engaging, with Park’s fluid, silvery tone ideal for the long lyrical lines. The Allegro moderato frequently soars, buttressed by spirited playing from the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, under Valentin Egel. The central Andante is poetically done, its disarming melodies cleanly articulated. The finale is warm and elegant; Park succeeds in holding the attention across its protracted 17-minute span.

Sibelius’s Suite is a charmer, its unpretentious pastoralism eliciting a lightness of touch from orchestra and soloist, the central Serenade features some exquisite pianissimo playing. The Serious Melodies, warmly dispatched, lack a certain aura of bardic solemnity brought out in less overtly romantic performances, while lively though it is, the D major Humoresque misses the airy fantasy of, say, Pekka Kuusisto.

Sueye Park makes her debut at the BBC Proms on 21 July

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