When the ORFEO label was established in Munich forty years ago, surely no one with the music scene back then would have predicted that the record company would develop into a firmly established player on the classical music market. One of the label’s main priorities in the early years was vocal music, with opera rarities top of the list and since the mid 1980s the re-use of historic tape recordings. Big names featured on the label’s own productions, while ORFEO also developed into a talent factory by discovering and nurturing young artist. This “ORFEO 40th Anniversary” 2-album sampler well reflects these two sides of the label by combining highlight tracks of historical recordings with today’s global stars.

The Skride Piano Quartet is made up of four likeminded musicians who have each achieved success as a soloist at the highest levels. The 2016-17 season included performances at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, Musikverein Wien, Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Malmo Chamber Music Festival, and BASF Ludwigshafen. Upcoming performances include the Concertgebouw, Philharmonie Essen, Great Guild Hall Riga, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Making their North American debut in the 2018-19 season, the Quartet offers programs featuring highlights from the piano quartet repertoire. The quartet is violinist Baiba Skride, violist Lise Berthaud, cellist Harriet Krijgh, and pianist Lauma Skride. This debut album includes the most famous Piano Quartets of Classical literature, by Mozart and Brahms as well then the unique Quartet movement by Gustav Mahler.

Born into a musical Latvian family violinist Baiba Skride won First Prize at the 2010 Queen Elisabeth Competition, held annually in Belgium. Ms. Skride’s natural approach to her music making has endeared her to some of today’s most important conductors and orchestras. Following her debut at the BBC Proms with the Oslo Philharmonic and Vasily Petrenko playing the Szymanowski Concerto No. 1, The Times noted, ‘Latvian violinist Baiba Skride sailed over the orchestra with long lines of melody, silver and sweet.’ She was immediately re-invited, and at the 2014 Proms played the Stravinsky Concerto with the BBC Symphony and Ed Gardner. Baiba Skride debut recording with Orfeo of the Szymanowski Concertos and Myths was nominated for the 2015 BBC Music Magazine Awards in the Concerto section. For her Orfeo CD follow up she has recorded two Scandinavian violin concertos truly exciting, fresh and innovative – Jean Sibelius’s well-loved concerto and Carl Nielsen’s unjustly neglected companion work – with the Tampere Philharmonic and conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali.

Taking a phone call, Miklós Rózsa could scarcely believe that the legendary violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz really was seriously interested in his Violin Concerto and ready to give the work its premiere – but so he did in 1956, and the first recording of the work, with its extreme technical challenges, was also made by Heifetz. And it had been just the same with the Violin Concerto by Korngold: the 1947 premiere and the brilliant first recording of this 20th-century classic again showcased Heifetz as soloist.

In the new generation of genuinely American musicians, one outstanding figure was Leonard Bernstein, an all-rounder whose early success led on to even greater heights. Bernstein rated his Violin Concerto of 1954, “Serenade,” inspired by Plato’s Symposium, as his best work ever, and this work too in its imaginatively slimmed-down scoring is now acknowledged to be an important 20th-century concerto for violin.

As an “encore,” this compilation includes the masterly Symphonic Dances from the immortal “West Side Story.”

REVIEWS:

This set of American concertos sees her widen her recorded repertoire still further and her performances of all three are highly successful. She’s very well supported by the young Finnish conductor, Santtu-Matias Rouvali who here appears with the two orchestras of which he’s currently Music Director. The Gothenburg Symphony does the honors on the first disc while disc two features the Tampere Philharmonic. Both orchestras make first rate contributions.

— MusicWeb International