This new album features premiere recordings of contemporary works for solo violin composed by Canadian women and performed by Nova Scotia violinist Dr. Gillian Smith. Works include "Cinque Danze per Violino Solo" by JUNO award winning composer Ana Sokolovic, "Versprechen" by Kati Agocs (now a composition professor at New England Conservatory) and "Inside the Stone" from Canadian-Australian composer Veronika Krausas. Recorded at the beautiful stone sanctuary at First Baptist Church Halifax, these recordings show the intense, passionate and imaginative works of Canadian women composers for solo violin, very few of which have been previously recorded.

The romance in music is an often-overlooked, independent genre. Vocal romanzas were popular from the 15th century onwards, with their roots in the songs of medieval troubadours. Many slow concerto movements carry the subtitle, too, with its implication of softness, gentleness and melodic beauty. But more and more composers through the 19th century grasped the possibilities of the Romance as an instrumental song without words and a form in its own right. They had before them a growing audience of non-connoisseur listeners and amateur performers who would take delight in accessible but touching music: these are the origins of the music on this album. From an extensive field, Davide Alogna has constructed a beautifully varied sequence of Romances by celebrated and lesser-known composers. The two best examples of the genre remain those composed on the cusp of the 19th century by Beethoven, though they are little heard in concert these days. Seventy years later, Saint-Saëns enriched the repertoire with his own pair of Romances, more richly expressive compared to Beethoven’s delicacy and restraint. From later still the mood changes again, with the fresh Slavonic rhythms of Dvorák’s F minor Romance, the cool beauty of Svendsen’s G major Romance and the ripe sentimentality of Bruch’s F major Romance (originally for viola and orchestra).

Having completed his studies at the Accademia Chigiana of Siena, Davide Alogna was acclaimed by his teacher Giuliano Carmignola as ‘an amazing talent’. A previous recording was praised for its virtuosity and brilliance by the Italian Musica magazine, and his partnership with the veteran pianist Bruno Canino has delighted audiences throughout Europe.

In this new concerto album one of the greatest violinists of our time, Christian Tetzlaff, performs two standard violin concertos in fresh new interpretations together with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin directed by the orchestra’s exciting new music director, Robin Ticciati.

Christian Tetzlaff is considered one of the world’s leading international violinists and maintains a most extensive performing schedule. Musical America named him ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ in 2005. His recording of the Bartók Violin Concertos (ODE 1317-2) received both Gramophone and ICMA Awards, and the recording was also a finalist for the BBC Music Award in 2019. His recording of the Violin Concertos by Mendelssohn and Schumann, released on Ondine in 2011 (ODE 1195-2), and Bach Sonatas and Partitas released in 2017 (ODE 1299-2D) received the ‘Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik’. In addition, in 2015 ICMA awarded Christian Tetzlaff as the ‘Artist of the Year’, and he also received ECHO ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ award in 2017.

REVIEWS:

Tetzlaff may at times excitedly rush his fences, but in collaboration with Robin Ticciati and his alert Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, he transforms aspects of what so many have treated as a sort of Holy Grail into a beer tankard. If Beethoven’s Concerto emerges as uncompromisingly provocative, Tetzlaff’s Sibelius also errs on the side of danger…In many respects, a real knock-out.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice)

What I especially admire about these entrancing performances by Tetzlaff is the freshness and vitality he brings so effectively to these masterworks. One senses that he is entirely inside the music emotionally. Throughout both works the sound of Tetzlaff’s violin, a modern instrument made by German luthier Stefan-Peter Greiner, is glorious. Under Robin Ticciati the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin excel with firm and resolute playing in performances which are entirely empathetic to the soloist from start to finish.

– MusicWeb International

Leopoldo Miguez and Glauco Velasquez were both leading figures in Brazil’s classical music scene at the turn of the 20th century, bringing back influences from Europe to a homeland in a state of enormous social upheaval. The lyrical character of Miguez’s ambitious Violin Sonata, Op. 14 is developed in far more sophisticated and contrapuntal manner to anything previously experienced in Brazil, while Velasquez’s two sonatas are even richer in nuance. The tropical Romanticism of these three works marked an important change in Brazil’s chamber music, from pieces intended largely for domestic use to works equal to the noble expression of its new Republic.

REVIEWS:

Violinist Emmanuele Baldini and pianist Karin Fernandes master all three compositions, playing throughout with panache and faultless technical command. Ulrich Schneider is the fine producer and engineer for this worthy project.

-- Rafael's Music Notes

Velasquez’s First Sonata bursts onto the scene with ringing romantic lyricism brought to the boil. This three-movement score from 1909 triangulates between Brahms, Franck, Liszt and, surely unwittingly, William Baines, and early Delius. High fervour smokes and radiates from these pages. The only ‘departure’ comes in the final hazily impressionistic pages.

The Miguez dates from well into the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Again, lyricism spills forth and does so fluently but mixed in with some Kreislerian sweetness.

The disc concludes with Velasquez’s Second Sonata. It was completed when the composer was only 27 and had just three more years to live. It again plunges and swings its way through three movements in a Grieg-like style. The finale is bold and confident and at 11:03 not at all perfunctory. The composer shapes it as a substantial statement of romantic substance and mastery. Its peroration ends at high pulse and temperature.

The recording and the playing of Baldini and Fernandes and are quite exemplary.

– MusicWeb International

For her eighth album on Orfeo, Baiba Skride presents a programme of works by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. In addition to his own instrument, the piano, the violin remained the most important instrument for Bartók throughout his life. This is probably due to the fact that, with its subtle versatility and traditional associations, the violin was eminently suited to his folk music transcriptions and adaptations. This new recording demonstrates Baiba Skride’s facility in conveying this special Hungarian atmosphere. She’s supported by the WDR Sinfonieorchester under Norwegian conductor Elvind Aadland. Baiba Skride (born 1981) is a Latvian classical violinist. She was the winner of the Queen Elisabeth Violin Contest in 2001, and has performed around the world, including alongside the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

Though he was known primarily as a symphonist, and despite his large portfolio of piano works, Raff's first love was the violin and his pieces for the instrument were promoted by no less a virtuoso than Sarasate, The Violin Sonata No. 1 is a powerful work teeming with expressive intensity and lyrical beauty- it remained the most performed of his violin sonatas during his lifetime. The large-scale Violin Sonata No. 2 offers his characteristic lyric impulse and virtuoso fireworks. Laurence Kayaleh has performed as a guest soloist with many distinguished orchestras, including the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich, the Russian National Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, and many others. She has recorded the complete works for violin and piano by Medtner, Honegger and Catoire for Naxos. She plays a 1742 Guarneri which belonged to the eminent violinist and pedagogue Carl Flesch.

South African violinist Piet Koornhof is Delos’s most often-recorded violin virtuoso, having participated in seven previous recordings for Delos: both as soloist with piano accompaniment and with larger ensembles. This most impressive release pairs him with a superb pianist, although most knowledgeable listeners think of these beloved pieces as works for violin and orchestra. In fact, the composers themselves arranged these versions for violin and piano, except for the Saint-Saens work, which was arranged by Bizet. It should therefore come as no surprise that the versions heard in this album feature piano parts of particular richness and complexity- beautifully delivered by Albie van Schalkwyk, who is widely considered to be “the dean of collaborative pianists” in South Africa. Together, these masterly artists weave musical webs that radiate tremendous appeal, lush emotional intensity and virtuosic excitement.

No instrument can match the violin in its ability to emulate the beauty and subtlety of the human voice. Its design is an acoustic marvel, with tonal qualities that seem limitless, turning violin makers over the centuries, such as Stradivarius and Guarneri, into household names. For the great composer-violinists represented in this programme, including Paganini, Sarasate, and Ysaye, the violin provided the ultimate means of artistic expression. It is capable of reproducing a full range of emotions, from soaring lyricism to guttural passion with nuance and sophistication. This collection brings together some of the best-loved pieces in the violin repertoire.

Violin music isn’t what one normally associates with Franz Schubert, but he did in fact receive his first violin lessons as a young boy from his father. At the age of 11 he was accepted as a member of the choir of the imperial court chapel, and as such became a pupil at the Stadtkonvikt school. There he joined the excellent student orchestra, eventually assuming the role of leader. Among his examiners was the court Kapellmeister Anton Salieri, who took a keen interest in Schubert’s compositions. Schubert left the school in 1813, but continued working with Salieri for a few years longer, possibly on some of the pieces recorded here – the Rondo, Konzertstuck and G minor Sonata all hail from 1816 while the Polonaise is from the following year. These early, unpretentious violin compositions were probably intended for Schubert’s older brother Ferdinand, who led the family string quartet in which Franz played the viola. Composed in 1827, when Schubert had already written his symphonies, string quartets, piano sonatas and hundreds of songs, the closing Fantasy in C major is another matter. A substantial piece in four sections, it contains challenging writing for both instruments, demonstrating what a master Schubert himself was on both. On this and its soon-to-be-released companion disc, Ariadne Daskalakis has gathered all of Schubert’s works for violin. Equally at home on baroque and modern instruments, she has chosen to perform them in a historical context, joined by Paolo Giacometti on a fortepiano by Salvatore Lagrassa from c. 1815 and the period band Die Kolner Akademie conducted by Michael Alexander Willens.

Making their first appearance on BIS, Margaret Batjer and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) cross great distances in both time and space in this programme of concertante violin works. The disc opens with a Violin Concerto by the American composer Pierre Jalbert (b. 1967), whose music has been described as ‘rich in instrumental color and harmonically engaging’. Composed in 2017, the 26-minute concerto was a commission from the orchestra and here makes its first recorded appearance. The next work takes us to 18th-century Germany, where Johann Sebastian Bach had been busy studying the concertos of his Italian colleagues, and especially Vivaldi. His Concerto in A minor is thought to have been composed around 1730, at a time when Bach had freed himself from his models, producing works richer in both texture and sentiment. For the second half of the programme we return to our own time, travelling northwards to the Baltic countries, as Bach is followed by one of his great admirers in modern music, the Estonian composer Arvo Part (b. 1935). Margaret Batjer and the orchestra offer us their performance of what is probably Part’s most famous piece, Fratres from 1977. Originally written for chamber ensemble ‘without fixed instrumentation’, it soon became a modern classic and exists in numerous versions. The one heard here, for violin, string orchestra and percussion, was made by the composer in 1992. The closing Lonely Angel is by Part’s slightly younger colleague Peteris Vasks (b. 1946) from Latvia. Reworked from a movement for string quartet, the piece was inspired by a particular image: ‘I saw an angel, flying over the world; the angel looks at the world’s condition with grieving eyes, but an almost imperceptible, loving touch of the angel’s wings brings comfort…’

Volume II of SOMM Recordings' Beethoven Plus series sees violinist Krysia Osostowicz and pianist Daniel Tong reuniting to conclude their ambitious project to commission 10 leading contemporary composers to write 'companion' pieces for - and inspired by - Beethoven's seminal set of 10 Violin Sonatas. The result is a fascinating conversation between past and present in which Beethoven's mastery of the form prompts illuminating - and often surprising - commentary from entirely modern perspectives. Volume II includes Beethoven's three most substantial Sonatas - Opp.30 No.2, 47 and 96 - and the enigmatic A major (Op.30 No.1); works that go to the very heart of the composer's life, aspirations and music. New here are complementary and contrasting works that include Kurt Schwertsik's probing, sincerely touching two-movement Unterwegs Nach Heiligenstadt, which begins in angst and ends in sublime C major; Matthew Taylor's whirlwind Tarantella Furiosa, a virtuosic encore of sorts to Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata; and Philip Ashworth's Air, a lilting, lyrical commentary that seems to offer a response, in it's conclusion, to Beethoven's famously rhetorical query "Must it be so?" David Matthews' Sonatina completes the new commissions in a compact, concentrated form that emulates Beethoven with almost forensic attention to detail, even while opening out his interrogation of the Op.96 Sonata (Beethoven's last such work for violin and piano) with challenging demands on both violin and piano. Beethoven Plus was presented in a series of concerts by Krysia Osostowicz and Daniel Tong (who provides informative booklet notes) at the Kings Place, London in 2015 and has since been performed in leading venues around the UK. Reviewing Volume I, Gramophone hailed "Osostowicz and Tong's interpretative style [as] patient, affectionate, warmly conversational, sensitive to harmonic detail", it's reviewer adding: "I think I may have sighed with pleasure".

All of the works on this album were written for the violinists who play them here. Composer David Loeb has worked with traditional Asian music as a composer, scholar, and performer for over fifty years. David Loeb was born in 1939 in New York into a family which took music and painting very seriously. He studied composition with Peter Pindar Stearns at the Mannes College of Music in New York, and then completed a master's degree at Yale. 1964 became a critical year for his future. He began teaching at Mannes and has remained on the faculty there ever since, simultaneously teaching at the Curtis Institute from 1973 until 2000. Receiving a commission to compose a piece for an early music ensemble resulted a continuing involvement with writing for historical instruments, especially viols. Later that same year he began studying traditional Japanese music with Shinichi Yuize.

Acclaimed violinist Ellen Jewett’s explorations of Turkey’s musical traditions led to her discovery of Saygun’s Partita, a dense and expressive sister to Bartok’s solo sonata that weaves a beautiful tapestry of colors by combining a rich Romanticism with traditional folk elements. Onur Turkmen’s Beautiful and Unowned is inspired by the unique dreamlike atmosphere of Cappadocia, while Mahir Cetiz’s Soliloquy is a monologue that ranges from cries to whispers. Both of these recent works were commissioned by Ellen Jewett, and the entire programme was recorded in the unique acoustics of a hand-carved Cappadocian cavern. Ellen Jewett has enjoyed a varied career, performing in major concert halls worldwide. She was a member of the prize-winning Audubon Quartet for eleven years, which was critically acclaimed by The New York Times. As an advocate for new music, Jewett has worked with many composers and performed countless premieres. Other chamber music collaborations include performances with Yo Yo Ma, Maxim Vengerov, Colin Carr, Johannes Moser and Idil Biret.

Franz Schubert’s output for violin and piano consists of only six opus numbers, even though he was well able to play this instrument, having learned it during his childhood and regularly playing it in chamber music. The three sonatas in this recording date from the spring of 1816. Their modest dimensions, “for pianoforte with accompaniment of violin” - an old-fashioned formulation evoking the eighteenth century - led to their being published as ‘sonatinas’, even though their facility is only apparent and in no way reflects their nature, nor Schubert’s intentions. They correspond to a fertile period for the composer and are contemporary with his Fourth Symphony, his Stabat Mater, the composition of his opera Die Bürgschaft, much chamber music and, of course, lieder – the final draft of Marguerite at the Spinning Wheel and the Erlkönig date from March 1816. Schubert also experienced great personal changes, and with the support of a circle of acquaintances that expanded in the direction of an artistic, intellectual and liberal elite that was betting on his talent, he took it upon himself fully to become a composer. These sonatas are the work of a composer aged 19 who, in admiration of Mozart, drew close to the worlds of Weber and Beethoven. Indeed, the spirit of Mozart runs right through these three sonatas, he who represents the crucial reference at this time, and certainly was such for Schubert. Yet without imitating the master, Schubert rewrites the ‘Mozartian’ sonata, romanticizes it, opens it out to the new century. Two muso artistes, both with long experience as chamber musicians, have got together to play these magnificent pieces: the excellent violinist Stéphanie Paulet and the pianist Daniel Isoir, who for the occasion plays an outstandingly beautiful Schott piano of 1835.

Alfonso Romero Asenjo's distinguished career has resulted in numerous awards and distinctions, highlighting an unmistakable and very particular musical language whose appetite for spirituality and selective use of the avant-garde is now an established aspect of the so-called 'Generacion del 51.' The String Symphony has a cinematic restlessness that conjures hauntingly unsettling images, while the Cello Concerto pits the luminous and extended melodic phrases of the soloist against dense darkness from the orchestra. The Concerto for Two Violins is in part a tribute to J.S. Bach's work in the same setting, endowing Baroque resources with a mysterious and attractive modernity.