Boris Begelman, the highly acclaimed leader of Concerto Italiano, frequently takes on the role of soloist in the many concerts that Rinaldo Alessandrini’s celebrated orchestra devotes to the music of Vivaldi and his contemporaries. High time then for Begelman to take centre stage in one of the Vivaldi Edition’s solo violin recordings. This ninth concerto volume sees the welcome return of Rinaldo Alessandrini’s ensemble, which already features in thirteen albums of the Vivaldi collection. In this purely instrumental repertoire they excel as much as they do in vocal music, deploying generously sweeping melodic lines, inspired dynamics, and a musical language already mastered to perfection yet always interpreted anew.

The violinist Amandine Beyer interprets Bach’s famous Sonatas and Partitas, veritable bravura pieces that push back the limits of the instrument, at the intersection between the German solo tradition and the Italian concerto. After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue, Pink and White collections (a total of sixty reissues) which gave a new lease of life to the pearls of the Baroque catalogues from our house labels, here are fourteen new titles which offer a chance to discover other treasures, whether Baroque or dating from an earlier or later era. Like the most recent series, this sixth instalment opens out onto the Classical repertory (Mozart by Ensemble 415 and Chiara Banchini) and the Renaissance (Févin by Doulce Mémoire and Denis Raisin Dadre); recordings that are an integral part of Alpha’s identity and history. Fourteen reissues performed by the leading musicians in the field, most of which received one or more awards on their original release. Proper booklets accompany the discs, with notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from all over the world have been selected to illustrate the covers, this time with the guiding thread of the color green, a symbol of nature, fertility...and hope!

The so-called Di Martinelli Collection is preserved in the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), and contains a total of sixty-five manuscripts and thirty-two prints, including a remarkable manuscript with thirty-two late 17th-century violin sonatas from which the works on the present recording are taken. Collected in the manuscript are challenging pieces of various origins, whereby three regional focal points can be ascertained: composers of Flemish-Netherlandish descent (Petersen, Goor), composers from South-German/Habsburg regions (Albicastro, Schmelzer, Pez, Wentzely, Finger and erroneously Biber) and several Italian composers (Cailò, Lonati, Capellini). All of the musicians on the present recording studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and represent a new generation in the field of historical musical practice, a generation which combines high technical mastery with curiosity for the historical fundamentals and joy in experimentation. Eva Saladin, Swiss-Dutch descent, is meanwhile one of the most renowned representatives of her generation on the baroque violin. The basso continuo team joining her for this project (Johannes Keller, Sebastian Wienand and Daniel Rosin) includes the use of two harpsichords, a practice that shows off fascinating possibilities in terms of sound and harmonic and figurative elaboration.

Born April 18, 1930, Dénes Kovács began violin lessons at six. At fourteen, he began his studies at Budapest's Liszt Academy in the class of Ede Zathureczky. Graduating in 1951, he began his professional career, playing first in the army's Central Arts Ensemble, and for a decade, leader of the Hungarian Opera House Orchestra. In 1955, he took first prize in the Carl Flesch competition in London, inaugurating an international career that lasted for the rest of his life. He performed widely and recorded the great works of the violin: Concertos, chamber and solo repertoire from the baroque period to the present, including all the Beethoven sonatas and string trios, Bach's sonatas & partitas for solo violin, Bartok's works for violin, and many concertos by his Hungarian contemporaries. He began teaching at the Liszt Academy of Music in 1957, becoming head of the violin department in 1959, and professor five years later. He was appointed Rector of the Academy in 1968. His contributions to music were abundantly recognized in Hungary, including the Liszt Prize, (1955, 1958), the Kossuth Prize (1963), and the Béla Bartók - Ditta Pásztory Prize (1989, 2000). In 1970 he was named Eminent Artist of the Hungarian People's Republic. Denes Kovacs played on a violin made by Guarneri del Gesú in 1742. He passed away on February 11, 2005.

"This is a splendid fellow and musician" - with this quote Robert Schumann characterized the then 26-year-old Danish composer-colleague Niels Wilhelm Gade in a letter of January 5, 1844 to his Dutch friend Johannes Verhulst. The works on this release are testimonies of three different creative periods of Gade: an early work is the first Sonata in A major, op. 6 (dedicated to Clara Schumann) - the second Sonata in D minor, op. 21, (dedicated to Robert Schumann) was composed in 1850 - the third Sonata in B flat major, op. 59, (dedicated to Wilma Normann-Neruda) belongs to the circle of his late compositions. Among Gade's last works is the collection Volkstänze im nordischen Charakter, op. 62, written in 1886 for the great violinist Joseph Joachim.

On her debut album for Berlin Classics, Sarah Christian performs no less a work than Tchaikovskys warhorse, his Violin Concerto, ably supported by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Jéremie Rhorer. For full measure, she plays Tchaikovskys Sextet Souvenir de Florence. Music that revives you is an urgent necessity at times such as these. Many people have been hit hard by the Corona pandemic, music-makers perhaps hardest of all. Tchaikovsky composed both his Violin Concerto and his Recollection of Florence when he was at a spa, recovering from depression and nervous breakdown. Vigorous and virtuosic, but also tuneful and romantic, each work reflects this sense of recovery, the surge of new energy in convalescence. Sarah Christian set great store by recording these two works in the difficult year of 2020. She was concerned that despite all the checks and challenges that we musicians and others too have faced and are still facing, it should still be possible to give back something tangible, audible, something positive. This album means a lot to the soloist, as can again be seen in her bond with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, of which she has been leader since 2013. She speaks of it as her musical family, an assurance that comes across musically in the challenges of the Violin Concerto. Sarah Christian has an equally personal relationship with her fellow-musicians in the Sextet. Johannes Strake, Wen Xiao Zhen, Jano Lisboa, Jan-Erik Gustaffson and Maximilian Hornung are friends and companions with whom she can share a joke, relish thrilling experiences and discuss how to bring the music to life.

The set of six sonatas and partitas for solo violin is widely regarded as one of the summits of Bach’s output as a composer, and of the entire repertoire for the violin. With this new album the Brodsky Quartet give us the opportunity to hear some of this legendary music in an entirely new way, in these world-première recordings of Paul Cassidy’s arrangements for string quartet of the three solo sonatas. Writing about this project, Paul notes: ‘My daily practice invariably involves spending some time with Bach’s ‘Six Solos for Violin without Bass Accompaniment’ (Sei Solo â Violino senza Basso accompagnato). I am a devout being and these are my bible. As in the case of all ‘holy’ books, the six ‘solos’ open themselves to an infinite variety of interpretations, but whatever your approach, these miraculous pieces are endlessly cleansing and enriching for the body and soul, a balm for the spirit. Their challenging pages abound with multi-faceted characters whose succinct purity is a wonder to behold. They can move imperceptibly from being uplifting and euphoric one minute to heart-breaking and tragic the next.’

REVIEW:

As you might expect, recording quality is impeccable on this release, the church acoustic perfectly integrated into a detailed but nicely balanced sound. The Brodsky Quartet is of course excellent, providing committed performances that can stand up to repeated listening and increasing appreciation. Let’s hope the Partitas can be given the same treatment some time soon.

– MusicWeb International

This CD box set from BR-KLASSIK combines Mendelssohn's twelve string symphonies, his “Symphoniesatz“ in C minor (No. 13) and his early violin concerto in D minor in the form of studio recordings made by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester under its leader Henry Raudales. The violinist has won several awards and made numerous recordings with the orchestra as a conductor and soloist. (The Violin Concerto and Symphonies Nos. 1-6 have already been released separately). It was thanks to his father's penchant for organizing musical concerts in his family's Berlin apartment on Sunday mornings that the 11-year-old Felix Mendelssohn began to compose quite a long series of string symphonies, and also that the works were initially performed. The study of music and composition spurred the young composer on greatly; his diligence as well as his youthful creativity developed early, and he made astonishing progress. In 1821, he wrote the first half of his string symphonies, which together took less than two years to complete. During performances that formed part of the concerts at home, he always took over the direction of the chamber orchestra, which consisted of amateur and professional musicians from the Berlin court orchestra.

Mendelssohn’s early concerto for violin and string orchestra, written at around the same time for his violin teacher Eduard Rietz, was probably played in the same setting. Formally, it owes much to the concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach, but it clearly sounds like Mendelssohn. Ever since their long-lost manuscripts were successfully rediscovered in 1950, Mendelssohn’s early string symphonies have been a fixed part of the string and chamber orchestra repertoire. In the youthful freshness and carefreeness of these early works, one can already hear echoes of the instrumental masterpieces by this important symphonic composer of early Romanticism that were soon to follow.

REVIEW

The Belgian violinist Henry Raudales, originally from Guatemala and significantly promoted by Yehudi Menuhin, has been concertmaster of the Munich Radio Orchestra since September 2001.

These are gripping interpretations performed at a high technical level. They convince not only with exuberant temperament, tight rhythm, and great textures, but also express the melancholy of the Grave movements very well.

–Pizzicato (Remy Franck)

After the success of Duel (Opera Choice in BBC Music Magazine, Disc of the Month in Opera magazine, etc.), Giuseppina Bridelli presents a new solo project alongside the Quartetto Vanvitelli (recently awarded ‘5 Diapasons’ in the magazine Diapason for its second recording, devoted to the violin sonatas of Michele Mascitti), in which she tackles the fascinating world of the Italian chamber cantata for voice, continuo and solo violin.

Appena chiudo gli occhi ("As soon as I close my eyes") is the title of a musical voyage across the vast ocean of cantatas composed by two giants of early eighteenth-century music, Alessandro Scarlatti and Antonio Caldara, interspersed with an instrumental premiere by Giuseppe Valentini. The careers of the two composers intersected in 1708 in Rome, the heart of musical production and patronage, and continued in two of the principal European capitals: Scarlatti in Naples and Caldara in Vienna. The unusual scoring of these cantatas displays intimacy of sound and variety of timbre, as well as great attention to the individual melodic lines, aspects that more rarely emerge in pieces composed for more substantial forces.

Henry François Joseph Vieuxtemps was aged 4 when he started the violin with his father, a violin-maker and amateur violinist. He gave his first public performance at the age of 6 and his talent attracted the attention of Charles Auguste de Bériot, who brought him to Paris, where in 1829 he made his début. Robert Schumann compared him to Paganini. The famous Italian virtuoso was strongly impressed by the violinist’s performance in London in 1834. In turn, Paganini’s supernatural technique would remain a strong influence and inspiration for Vieuxtemps. Meanwhile he became an idol in Russia where he spent five years from 1846 till 1851. He was Musician at the court of Tzar Nicholas I, Violin teacher and soloist at the Imperial Theatre, and founder of the School of Violin at St. Petersburg Conservatory, contributing to the founding of a “Russian Violin School”. Back in his native Belgium he dedicated his life to teaching at the Brussels Conservatory, where he counted Eugène Ysaÿe among his pupils.

This new recording contains the substantial (over 40 minutes!) Violin Sonata Op.12, as well as Morceaux de Salon and Romances Sans Paroles.

Italian violinists Carmelo Andriani already successfully recorded for Brilliant Classics works by Michele Esposito. Pianist Pierluigi Camicia is a highly respected soloist and chamber music player, who collaborated with Ruggiero Ricci, Félix Ayo and the Quartetto di Cremona.

After acclaimed recordings of the great Romantic violin concertos by Brahms, Bruch and Tchaikovsky, Vadim Gluzman takes on the work that in the beginning of the 19th century mapped out a new course for the genre: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op.?61. With this work, Beethoven rejected the idea of a virtuoso display piece with a largely irrelevant orchestral accompaniment. Instead he presented a symphonic reinterpretation of the concerto principle, with soloist and orchestra becoming equal partners in a texture that is interwoven on many levels. Largely forgotten for several decades after the first performance in 1806, it is now considered one of the greatest violin concertos. However innovative Beethoven was in his opus 61, he nevertheless remained true to the tradition of allowing the soloist several cadenzas. Over the years, a number of composers and great violin virtuosos have proposed their own cadenzas for the concerto, with Alfred Schnittke being one of the more unexpected names. For this recording, Gluzman has chosen to perform Schnittke’s cadenzas, as a link to the second work on the disc: the composer’s Concerto No.?3 for violin and chamber orchestra. To Schnittke, the relationship between soloist and orchestra is quite different from that demonstrated in Beethoven’s score: ‘It seems to me that this relationship is never harmonically equitable and balanced… The soloist and orchestra are in fact adversaries.’ However they may be labelled, James Gaffigan and the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester nevertheless provide unstinting support to Gluzman in both scores.

To browse more of Josef Labor's chamber music recordings available on the Capriccio label, click here.

The positive response to Capriccio’s first recording of his Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet (C5390) has enabled this series to be continued now with three works representative of Labor's oeuvre from the early 1890s. In Vienna, Labor was part of Johannes Brahms’s close circle of friends. Brahms particularly valued his composer colleagues who went their own way without copying him. Labor’s music is very skillfully composed, always sensuous, and first and foremost melodious; it does not require a too complete concentration on itself. A total of around eighty compositions have survived. Among them are practically no occasional works, which is connected to the fact that he was blind: for him composition was a luxury, insofar as he had to rely on the help of a scribe who had to commit the work to paper.

REVIEW:

Josef Labor’s work list is relatively small in number, not much more than 80 compositions in total. Largely this is as a result of his concert career as an esteemed organist, and pianist—in which capacity he made a tiny number of recordings—and his extensive teaching practice.

His Violin Sonata No 1 dates from 1891 and its flowing lyricism indicates Brahms as a primary influence, not unsurprising in the case of the Vienna-based Labor. Thematically attractive, this well laid out four-movement work enshrines a rather ‘antique’ element in its slow movement, as its indication of Tempo di Menuetto-Quasi Sicilienne would indicate though, in this performance at least, there seems too little tempo contrast between the opening two movements. The finale shows Labor at his best in its quasi-improvisatory way but, true to form, though he prioritizes lyricism it’s never forceful; Labor remains a genial, generous composer. In terms of recorded balance I think Oliver Triendl’s piano is privileged over violinist Nina Karmon.

The Cello Sonata No 1 was written a few years later. Again, there is a feeling of free-flowing unimpeded lyricism, the piano busy, the cello serenely lyric, that marks out Labor’s priorities in sonata repertoire. There is plenty of Late Romantic ardor, as well as lissom frolicsome material in the Scherzo with the piano—Labor’s own instrument—leading. The compact third movement is a Quasi andante that functions much as an intermediary bridge to the finale which is energetic and has plenty of athletic esprit. The balance between the instruments is better here.

The final work is the Theme and Variations for Horn (or cello) and piano, written soon after the Cello Sonata. There’s Beethovenian precedent for the structure of this work, and its alpine warmth, finely brought out by Přemysl Votya, its metric changes and varied characterization of its variations are all most attractive and so too is the confident end to this eight-minute work, a fine addition to the horn-and-piano repertoire, though Labor sanctioned the use of a cello as well.

Labor was a genial composer who never aspired to empyrean realms. There is a lyric practicality and a self-containment of means and expression that ensure that nothing disturbs the dappled calmness of his music-making. There’s a smallness, perhaps, to much of his writing but it’s affectionate and well crafted.

-- MusicWeb Internaional (Jonathan Woolf)

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's reputation rests largely on his operas, but the instrumental music he composed at the beginning and end of his career deserves a wider currency. The influence of Brahms can be detected in the First and Second Violin Sonatas, though Wolf-Ferrari's distinctive long-breathed melodies and chromatic flow are clearly present; the dramatic and expressive Second also includes references to Wagner's Tristan. With it's neo-Bachian figuration, passages of intense melancholy and uplifting operatic fantasy, the final Third Sonata is an enigmatic work, and unlike any other in the repertoire.