The pieces on this CD belong to three different categories. First, we have some masterpieces of the repertoire for violin (from Mozart to Mendelssohn, from...

The pieces on this CD belong to three different categories. First, we have some masterpieces of the repertoire for violin (from Mozart to Mendelssohn, from Brahms and Tchaikovsky to Dvorák) to which Kreisler knew how to give a special splendor: all pieces that require a perfect balance between technical mastery and sensitivity. What follows is a selection of Kreisler's thirty or so original compositions for violin and piano, largely inspired by the salon music genre, including the trilogy of Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen with the very famous Liebesleid. Finally, we hear here pieces "à la manière de", so called pastiches, written by the same Kreisler, but inspired by composers of the past (Wilhelm Friedemann Bach or Louis Couperin, the grandfather of the famous François, but also Tartini and Vivaldi) to whom he curiously attributed them. The story of these pieces is unique: intended as encores at the end of the concert, Kreisler composed them himself, taking inspiration from some Baroque composers whose scores he supposedly found in a French monastery. He put them on the program under their names, convinced that the audience's interest would be greater if they were attributed to already known and respected authors. However, when musicologists could find no further traces of these pieces, in 1935 he was almost forced to admit the hoax and defend himself with the terse statement "the name changes, the value remains".