Joshua Bell – The Essential Joshua Bell (2CD)

OE04582

The Essential Joshua Bell is really more a snapshot of Bell's 1990s recordings that attempts to capture the essence of his playing than a "must-have" album. These are all from his days at Decca, before he moved to Sony Classical and started doing more crossover recordings, so the selections are standard violin repertoire items, many familiar -- such as the Mendelssohn and Brahms concertos -- a few less so. What is nice about the excerpts here are that they are not all flash and no substance. Therefore, it does give a good picture of Bell's skills, predominantly the way he has of always finding some joy or beauty in a piece, no matter how serious or dark it is, even more than his virtuosity. The disc also has a good mixture of concertos and chamber music, including a movement from Chausson's Concert pour piano, violon et quatuor à cordes, Op. 21. There is an Adagio from a Mozart concerto, but the music is primarily from the Romantic era, with the Prokofiev and Bloch thrown in to represent the modern era.