Anne Akiko Meyers – The Four Seasons: The Vivaldi Album (2014) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]

Anne Akiko Meyers – The Four Seasons: The Vivaldi Album (2014) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]

Anne Akiko Meyers presents The Four Seasons: The Vivaldi Album, also featuring the Vivaldi Triple Concerto (where she plays all 3 parts) and Arvo Part’s Passacaglia with the English Chamber Orchestra. The Four Seasons is a compilation of four violin concertos, Vivaldi’s best known classical compositions originally published in 1725. Each concerto represents and evokes a respective season, “Spring,” “Summer,” “Autumn,” and “Winter.” This will mark the debut recording of the ‘Ex-Vieuxtemps’.

Anne Akiko Meyers, Keith Lockhart, London Symphony Orchestra – Serenade: The Love Album (2015) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]

Anne Akiko Meyers, Keith Lockhart, London Symphony Orchestra – Serenade: The Love Album (2015) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]

Without much fanfare, Anne Akiko Meyers has risen to the top of the heap in American classical music; she was the best-selling traditional classical instrumentalist in the U.S. in 2014. She does nearly everything well and puts it across effectively: she has strong fundamentals, a good deal of stage charisma, great programming instincts, and a couple of extraordinary violins to which she has lifetime access, including the 1741 “Ex Vieuxtemps” Guarneri heard here. It’s unusual to hear this instrument, with its purring lower register, applied to the likes of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, but the truth is that she applies its capabilities in novel and entirely appropriate ways. Leonard Bernstein is at the center of the program, which sets it apart from the usual collections of sentimental pop tunes; Meyers effectively plays the more abstract Serenade After Plato’s Symposium against film themes and popular songs by Bernstein and other composers, with tango accents from Gade and Piazzolla to break things up. It’s an exceptionally engaging program that uses Meyers’ basically lyrical talents to the maximum, and her aims are perfectly complemented by the London Symphony under Keith Lockhart. That might seem an unusual combination, but once you listen it makes perfect sense. And the same can be said of Meyers’ playing in general. Luxuriantly melodic, and highly recommended.

Anne Akiko Meyers, English Chamber Orchestra, Steven Mercurio – AIR – The Bach Album (2012) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]

Anne Akiko Meyers, English Chamber Orchestra, Steven Mercurio – AIR – The Bach Album (2012) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]

This release by California violinist Anne Akiko Meyers looks both backward and forward. Meyers’ playing is a throwback to a style of Bach playing that was common a couple of generations ago but isn’t much heard anymore: flowery, heavy on the vibrato, a bit sentimental, with moments of slight tempo rubato in both the violin and the orchestral accompaniment of the English Chamber Orchestra (which was always the go-to group for this style) under Steven Mercurio. The novelty factor here involves the magic of overdubbing, which has been commonplace in pop since Patti Page’s hits of the 1940s but is still a rarity in classical music: Meyers uses a pair of Stradivarius violins in the Concerto for two violins, strings, and continuo in D minor, BWV 1043, playing both herself. Whether or not you are fully on board with these approaches, you’re likely to agree that Meyers executes them both quite well. Her pitch is precise in the Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041, and she pulls on the heartstrings in the arrangements of the so-called Air on a G string from the Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068, and the Bach/Gounod Ave Marie. But the real attraction is the Double Concerto, where Meyers makes the most of her two violins, the “Molitor” of 1697 (the violin I part) and the “Royal Spanish” of 1730. The latter has a slightly rougher tone that Meyers deploys very effectively in its lower register. Though it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, this recording has met with well-deserved commercial success.