George Frederick Pinto (1786-1806) was a child prodigy on violin and piano, playing his first violin concerto at the age of 11. His untimely death at the age of 21 prompted his teacher and mentor, the famous impresario Salomon, to say: ‘If he had lived…England would have had the honour to produce a second Mozart’. Pinto’s surviving music is focused on the piano, but he also wrote three sonatas with violin parts which depart from the convention of their time in being equally weighted with the piano part; perhaps because he could lay claim, like Mozart, to virtuoso abilities on both instruments. They were published in the year of his death, 1806, and they demanded, like Mozart, skilled practitioners above the level of most amateur music-making. In executing the violin part for this recording, Robert Bachara has decided to use extensive ornamentation, indeed in certain places to through-compose and supplement his part, which without doubt highlights the equal stature of the violin part. Pinto’s bold harmonic and melodic language, his experiments in form and keyboard writing are all well ahead of his time and invite comparison with early-Romantic pioneers such as Schubert and Beethoven. They appear to belong to mainstream German chamber music: on the one hand, looking back to Haydn and Mozart; and on the other, heralding Brahms, or even Reger (in the chromatic harmonization of the First Sonata’s finale). For his recording of Pinto Marek Toporowski has chosen a modern copy of a Viennese fortepiano by Walter which does full justice to the vivid colours of Pinto’s music. He is a harpsichordist, organist, pianist and conductor, one of Poland’s foremost performers in the historically informed performance movement.

Violins of Hope presents instruments that were owned by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust, representing strength and optimism for the future during mankind’s darkest hour. They have been refurbished by luthiers Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein, founders of the Violins of Hope project. On this album, recorded live at Kohl Mansion, the instruments are used to perform two string quartet masterpieces by Schubert and Mendelssohn, alongside a new composition by Jake Heggie, inspired by the violins’ histories.

Schubert’s unfinished Quartettsatz is often considered Schubert’s first mature work, and displays a typically Schubertian mix of impetuous agitation and sublime lyricism. Mendelssohn wrote his Quartet in F Minor as a “Requiem” for his deceased sister Fanny, not knowing that – tragically enough – he would follow her fate only two months later, at the age of 38. These two captivating works are performed by Kay Stern, Dawn Harms, Patricia Heller and Emil Miland, who join forces with mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, violinist Daniel Hope, and the young violin talent Sean Mori on Heggie’s INTONATIONS: Songs of the Violins of Hope.

The recording took place in the context of Holocaust Memorial Day 2020. Jake Heggie has a vast PENTATONE discography, including the opera It’s a Wonderful Life (2017) and song recital albums by Jamie Barton (Unexpected Shadows, 2020), Melody Moore, Lisa Delan and Joyce DiDonato. Sasha Cooke returns to PENTATONE after having featured on Mason Bates’ Grammy Award-winning opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (2018). Daniel Hope, Sean Mori, Kay Stern, Dawn Harms, Patricia Heller and Emile Miland all make their debut on the label.

REVIEW:

The world premiere of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer's Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope headlines this extraordinary concert, performed entirely on instruments owned by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust. The cycle, which tells the stories of instruments revivified by the Violins of Hope Project, begins with "Ashes," about a violin whose case was filled with the ashes of those burned in the ovens, and ends with "Liberation," inspired by the Liberation of Auschwitz. One of the most moving songs, "Motele," recounts the tale of 12-year-old violin prodigy Mordechai "Motele" Schlein. With excerpts from Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto weaving through the accompaniment, we learn that Schlein, who did not survive the war, smuggled gunpowder in his violin case to create a bomb he detonated in the basement of a Nazi Officer's Club.

Sasha Cook's warm, emotionally direct voice is perfect for these songs, and the heart-touching theme Heggie fashions for the final song is reminiscent of great tunes of the romantic era. How perfect, then, to conclude with Schubert's Quartettsatz in C Minor and Mendelssohn's last String Quartet, completed months before his death.

– Stereophile

The extant music for violin by Franz Schubert fits comfortably on two discs, and Ariadne Daskalakis released the first disc of her survey in 2019, to critical acclaim. The disc included works for violin and piano as well as three pieces with orchestral accompaniment, in performances described in The Strad as having ‘a litheness and shimmering delight that capture the music’s innate charm and dance-like vivacity with a beguiling sureness of touch.’ The second installment focuses on the chamber music with piano, and once again Daskalakis is joined by Paolo Giacometti, playing a fortepiano by Salvatore Lagrassa. The instrument, of the Viennese school, was built around 1815 and is thus almost exactly contemporary with the sonatas recorded here, the ones in D major and A minor dating from 1816 and the Sonata in A major from the following year. Schubert, who was around 20 years old at the time, had learned the violin from an early age, but the sonatas were probably intended for his older brother Ferdinand, who led the family string quartet in which Franz played the viola. The disc opens with a later work, however – the so-called Rondeau brilliant, from 1826. As the nickname indicates, the B minor Rondo is virtuosic, composed for Josef Slavík who before his early death was hailed as Paganini’s successor by the Viennese critics. In her liner notes, Ariadne Daskalakis describes the piece as ‘in turn dramatic, playful, gentle, seductive and wild’ and together with Paolo Giacometti she brings out each of these aspects.

With its new album 'Concertos 4 Violins', the specialist ensemble for early music, Concerto Koln, takes a look at the unique repertoire niche of concertos written for four solo violins. 'It must have been a challenge to bring together four solo violins, four virtuosos with four different personalities, four egos.' In this programme, devised by bassoonist Lorenzo Alpert, Concerto Koln gathers together the creme de la creme of baroque violin specialists. The orchestra already maintains a longstanding artistic partnership with each of them: Mayumi Hirasaki, who was concertmaster e.g. for Concerto Koln's most recent recording of Geminiani's works, Shunske Sato, who grew up in the USA and is extensively involved in the Netherlands Bach Society, Evgeny Sviridov from St. Petersburg and the Spaniard Jesús Merino Ruiz. They were all shaped differently by their various cultural backgrounds and pursued different educational paths. This makes the combination of the four all the more compelling. At the same time it demonstrates that any barriers in thought and in musical language can be overcome.

In this excellent second volume of the complete sonatas for violin and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven, Andrew Wan and Charles Richard-Hamelin present the three sonatas of opus 12 and Sonata No. 5 in F Major, Op. 24, often referred to as the “Spring Sonata” (Frühlingssonate), was composed in 1800 and 1801 during an especially productive period for Beethoven and is undoubtedly one of Beethoven’s most famous chamber works. The first volume of this collection was considered to be one of the best classical albums of 2018 by Radio-Canada. Andrew Wan is equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician and concertmaster. In August 2008, he was named concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (MSO), making him one of the youngest leaders of a major symphony. His relationship with the orchestra began with performances of Elgar's Violin Concerto, which were hailed as one of the top two musical moments of 2007 by La Presse. As a soloist, he has appeared in the United States, China, New Zealand, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Switzerland and Canada.

“American Music for Violin and Horn” presents 19 tracks of world-premiere recordings with music by 12 American composers. A varied program which includes original and transcribed works for violin and horn by David Amram, Vernon Duke, José Serebrier, Duke Ellington, Sean Hickey, Rebecca Clarke, Phillip Ramey, Francine Trester and several others, this album also features poetry by Emily Dickinson and Francine Trester, recited by the performers Elmira Darvarova (violin) and Howard Wall (horn). Several of the original works for violin and horn were written for these two performers (new compositions by David Amram, José Serebrier, Sean Hickey, Phillip Ramey, Francine Trester), while other works were transcribed by the performers as duets for their two instruments (“Black Beauty” by Duke Ellington, “Two Pieces” by Rebecca Clarke, “Etude” by Vernon Duke, “Calliope” & “Gramophone” by Jan Bach, two Bop-Duets by Bugs Bower, and other arrangements). Of note is Scott Dunn’s arrangement of Vernon Duke’s iconic standard “April in Paris”, in a version for violin and horn. All 19 tracks on this album are offered in their world-premiere recordings. Violinist Elmira Darvarova (first and only woman-concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra) and hornist Howard Wall (a New York Philharmonic member, formerly with The Philadelphia Orchestra) offer splendid interpretations.

Rosario Scalero began his career as a violinist, in which guise he gave the first Italian performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Moving to Vienna in the 1890s he studied composition with Brahms’s friend Mandyczewski, and both his surroundings and his study inspired his chamber music. The D minor Sonata Op.12 was dedicated to Mandyczewski’s wife Albine, and it made a huge impression on the violinist and influential educator David Mannes, who duly invited Scalero to head up the composition department of his conservatoire in New York. In August 1919 Scalero sailed to the New World, and in 1924 he began teaching at the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, becoming its head of theory and composition three years later. In this guise he taught the likes of Barber, Menotti and Rota, but his own music fell from view. The present issue allows us to hear for the first time the musical mind that directed the creative impulses of his students. His violin and piano output shows that his music brought together three distinct strands of inspiration. There was his background as a virtuoso violinist, which comes to the fore in the Op.2 Capricci for solo violin and the Op.15 Variations on a theme of Paganini (not the famous one immortalised by Rachmaninov), and his native feeling for a cantabile melody, so evident in the Op.4 Romance. Then there is his life-long allegiance to his Italian roots to be enjoyed in the sets of Danze Napoletane Op.27 and the Danze Piemontesi. But equally his Viennese training yielded not only long-form structures such as the Sonata but also a trio of Waltz-Caprices Op.16 and neoclassical pieces in a lighter style such as the Suite of dances ‘im alten Stil’ and Eine kleine Suite of pieces ‘after’ Scarlatti.

18th-century Italian violinists trained in the tradition of Arcangelo Corelli, spreading his elegant, expressive and virtuosic style on their travels throughout Europe. Giovanni Mossi’s sonatas retain Corelli’sdramatic contrasts and structure, while Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli also incorporates features found in music by Vivaldi. Both composers’ works combine formal elegance with wild abandon, lyrical charm and virtuosity alongside plenty of room for improvisation from acclaimed soloist Augusta McKay Lodge.

"...Double-stopping is central to this Corellian school of violin writing, and she tackles it fearlessly. No less impressive is her sheer stamina, dashing off extended passages of dense figuration with no audible difficulty. One gets the feeling, from the way she confidently places her final cadences like a winning hand of cards, that there isn’t a single taxing bar on the album she hasn’t enjoyed getting her teeth into — and it’s safe to say the same holds true for those of us with the rather easier task of merely enjoying the results..."
David Smith, Early Music America

"...A delightful selection of Italian violin sonatas is brought to life by Augusta McKay Lodge and her fellow performers. The legacy of Arcangelo Corelli as both a player and a composer is fully on show in this album named in recognition of his influence..."
David Smith, Early Music America

After devoting an album to sonatas by Giuseppe Tartini, for this anniversary year of the illustrious Paduan virtuoso, Evgeny Sviridov offers us a recording of violin concertos. This is his first collaboration with Millenium Orchestra, the ensemble founded by Leonardo Garcia Alarcon in the framework of CAVEMA in Namur. Most of the concertos selected come from manuscript copies made in eighteenth century Germany, where Tartini’s reputation was very high. Evgeny Sviridov has found in these scores cadenzas and ornaments which are very probably in the hand of Johann Georg Pisendel, the great virtuoso violinist of the Dresden court, a friend (and interpreter) of Johann Sebastian Bach! Following a practice that was becoming increasingly common in Germany at that time, one of the concertos has two horn parts in addition to the strings. Of the 130 or so surviving violin concertos, Evgeny Sviridov has selected five.

Not only was Robert Fuchs an admired friend of Brahms, but he nurtured a prodigious number of pupils, among whom were Enescu, Korngold, Mahler, Wolf, and Sibelius who called Fuchs a clever orchestrator, professional to his fingertips, and very happy as a composer. The three Violin Sonatas, composed over a 24-year period between 1877 and 1901, exemplify Fuchs superbly crafted and melodious grace, with soaring Romanticism spiced with occasional Hungarian color, folkloric themes, and vivacious finales.

Joan Manen was an admired and prolific Catalan composer who wrote in all genres, from opera to transcriptions. He was also one of the leading violinists of his day and made the first recording of Beethovens Violin Concerto. Manens Violin Concerto No. 3 Iberico is a brilliantly written and unashamedly Romantic work that exudes Iberian vitality without recourse to Hispanic effects. Cast on a huge scale, the Symphony No. 2 Iberica calls for an exceptionally large orchestra, with music that is pastoral, Spanish-flavored and, at times, solemn.

Eugène Ysaÿe was a towering figure in the history of the violin. He composed a number of important works, most inspirationally the cycle of Six Sonatas for Solo Violin, Op. 27 published in 1924, which rank among the greatest and most demanding. A different version of number 6 – an unfinished version – was found in the Lavergne Manuscript in 2018. Here is a world premiere recording in its entirety, as it was left by the composer. Niklas Walentin began playing violin at the age of six. He has been described to have a unique style of playing, which combines a strong traditional, and old fashioned playing with an innovative approach to the world of classical music. This style has, despite his young age, has taken him everywhere as a celebrated soloist, from concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York to The Mariinsky theater in Sct. Petersburg.

Seventy years of Italian repertoire (1888-1958) for violin and organ are summarized in this release which lines up a rather singular, but extremely interesting, series of composers of various geographic and stylistic origins who were active between the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. Roberto Noferini on violin and Andrea Toschi on organ and harmonium offering to us pages by fifteen Italian authors from various geographic origins (from Milan to Reggio Calabria) and culture. The suggestive titles refer to recognizable images and situations ranging from Christmas, to the liturgy, to the work, to pure forms. The use of historical instruments for the accompaniment of the violin gives the correct aesthetic rendering to these very rare and interesting works.

Fazil Say is one of the world’s most prominent pianists but he is also a much-admired composer with a substantial catalogue of works. He combines both these accomplishments in his two Violin Sonatas, the first of which is suffused with Turkish motifs and dances, such as the horon. The second sonata takes as its theme the abuse of nature and the need to resist despoliation. His Violin Concerto is subtitled ‘1001 Nights in the Harem’ and is full of rich melodies and atmosphere, and features an array of Turkish percussion instruments. One of the most creative and versatile artists of his generation, German-born Friedemann Eichhorn’s artistic activities range from performing early Baroque music on period instruments to classical and contemporary works with renowned orchestras and chamber music partners. Among many other pieces, Eichhorn rediscovered and first recorded the complete violin concertos by French virtuoso Pierre Rode. He studied with Valery Gradow, Alberto Lysy and Margaret Pardee and graduated from the Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts, the International Menuhin Music Academy and The Juilliard School. He also earned a PhD in musicology at the University of Mainz.

Ferdinand Rebay was born in Vienna where he studied piano and composition, winning the Brahms Prize. He wrote operas, a symphony, concertos and many songs, but was increasingly drawn to writing for the guitar for which he wrote 600 pieces of various kinds. The three sonatas recorded here are little known and reflect Rebay’s immersion in Romantic neo-Classicism. Themes are lyrical, utilizing folk song, energetic March themes and variations, with a tapestry of emotions both sombre and exuberant. Laurence Kayaleh has recorded the complete works for violin and piano by Medtner, Honegger and Catoire for Naxos. Her Catoire recording (8.573345) was selected in Fanfare’s ‘Want List’ for 2016: ‘The brilliant performance by violinist Laurence Kayaleh and pianist Stéphane Lemelinis lively and its sound is clear, clean and pleasantly warm.’ Guitarist Michael Kolk has performed at music festivals and concert halls throughout Europe and North America. A prizewinner at numerous guitar competitions, he has released four solo albums to date, as well as three releases as part of the HK Guitar Duo, and an album of Mauro Giulianiduos with Jeffrey McFadden (8.572445).

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REVIEW:

These sonatas are full of attractive melodies and a sophisticated harmonic awareness, shot through with a very ‘Viennese’ elegance and laced with debts to the folk tradition. The playing of Laurence Kayaleh is equally fluent and beautifully phrased, whether she is playing violin (a 1742 Guarneri) or viola (an instrument of 1820 by Giuseppe Dalaglio); her playing is lyrically eloquent and rich in tonal variety. Guitarist Michael Kolk complements her well and when his instrument is foregrounded (as in some of the variations which make up the second movement of the Sonata in C minor) his judgement of dynamics and his rhythmic sense are both faultless.

All three of these works are rewarding and enjoyable listening—so long as one doesn’t insist that a composer (poet, painter…) should be very much of his/her time. Though never intellectually profound or emotionally urgent, Rebay’s sonatas do explore a range of feelings, from the melancholy to the joyful.

– MusicWeb International