Jennifer Pike's latest CD is an exploration of the music of Bohemian masters. In commemoration of the centenary of the outbreak of World War I...

Jennifer Pike's latest CD is an exploration of the music of Bohemian masters. In commemoration of the centenary of the outbreak of World War I it features one of the great masterpieces of the violin repertoire, Janacek's poignant Violin Sonata written in 1914, alongside his other captivating miniatures for violin and piano. Also on the disc are Josef Suk's haunting and virtuosic Four Pieces for Violin and Piano and Dvorak's ever popular Four Romantic Pieces op 75. As an epilogue to this varied and emotional journey the disc concludes with Dvorak's transcendent Nocturne in B major. - JenniferPike.com

Since bursting onto the musical scene as a prodigiously talented youngster, Jennifer Pike has earned admirers the world over with her intelligent musicianship and dazzling technique. Her stunning recent recording of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, described in The Mail on Sunday as an ‘auspicious entry into the big league’, confirmed her status as a truly outstanding soloist of the highest calibre. Here she is joined by her established duo partner Tom Poster in music for violin and piano by three great Czech composers.

Dvorák’s four Romantic Pieces, originally composed for string trio, are miniatures of beguiling simplicity and unselfconscious lyricism. The Nocturne in B major also started life in a different guise, this time as an abandoned movement from the String Quartet in E minor.

Josef Suk was a member of a generation of Czech composers who built on the foundations which Dvorák and Smetana had laid. His Four Pieces were something of a turning point in his output, widening his range of harmony and expression; they develop from the serious and dark qualities of the first, ‘Quasi ballata’, to the high spirits of the concluding ‘Burleska’.

The Violin Sonata is perhaps the first work that Janácek composed in his strikingly original mature style. Each movement is built from highly charged and intensely expressive melodic fragments. The Allegro recorded here was originally intended as the Sonata’s final movement but later replaced. The Romance and Dumka come from a much earlier period in the composer’s life but no doubt demonstrate a Slavonic spirit that was to remain with Janácek always.

Review:

She is particularly alluring in Dvorak's Romantic Pieces, by turns intimate, consoling and confiding - and always beautifully controlled. Pike and Poster make a great double-act. A fine recording and informative notes complete an enticing disc.

– Gramophone