After three acclaimed CDs with works by Mozart for piano and violin, the well-known young Salzburg violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger now presents all the violin sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. With the internationally renowned Beethoven specialist Michael Korstick at the piano, the first part of this series begins with the Sonata No. 8 in G, op. 30/3, the famous ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata No. 9 in A, op. 47 and the seemingly more heartfelt in tone and final Violin Sonata No. 10 in G, op. 96, once praised by critics as the ‘most poetic and musically most sensitively crafted’ of his sonatas. The Austrian-born Mr. Irnberger performs often at international festivals and has a discography of recordings with musicians such as Jörg Demus and Paul Badura-Skoda as well as with the Israel Chamber Orchestra and the ‘Spirit of Europe’ orchestra. Köln native Michael Korstick has undertaken concerts and tours to Mexico, Korea, Andalusia and Morocco. For his CD recordings, which have received excellent reviews in music magazines and journals, he has been awarded the German ‘Echo Klassik Prize’ several times and the MIDEM Classical Award.

Thierry Lancino’s background includes extensive periods of research at IRCAM and elsewhere,but his recent work concentrates on a lyrical and bold freedom of style embracing ideas of bothseduction and spirituality. Inspired by a scene of historical impact, his Prelude and Death ofVirgil dramatizes the demise of a daunting genius. Lancino writes of his Violin Concerto that hisimagination was fired by ‘the thought of a little piece of wood (in reality a 1704 Stradivarius),played by Isabelle Faust, confronting a gigantic machine (the full orchestra)’. Thierry Lancino’sRequiem (Naxos 8.572771) was described as ‘exhilarating’ by BBC Music Magazine.

In this third volume of the great Genoan violinist Renato de Barbieri, IDIS collects two recordings never published on CD: Respighi’s Sonata in B minor for Violin and Piano and the Concert “I Profeti” of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, recorded live in 1960. The performance of Respighi’s Sonata compares favorably to the most celebrated editions of the work, even that by Jascha Heifetz.

Three seldomly recorded compositions are on this disc: Kodály’s Duo, Op. 7; Glière’s Eight Duets, Op. 39; and Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello. Violinist Felix Froschhammer received the prestigious “Bayerischer Musikfonds” Scholarship for study at the Conservatoire de Lausanne and together with his sister Julia won the only Prize at the International Wolfgang Jacobi Competition for 20th c. Chamber Music. Cellist Florian Rohn began study at age 5 and graduated from the Conservatoire de Lausanne with the Max Jost Award, presented for the most successful student of the year and is now principal cellist at the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra, Norway.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The German composer Friedrich Kuhlau (1786-1832) fled to Denmark as a young man and with his strong cosmopolitan personality became a loner – and at the same time a key figure – in the Danish Golden Age. Kuhlau championed new tones in Danish music, and his melodically appealing violin sonatas were the first Danish sonatas in the Romantic style. With this recording Duo Åstrand/Salo lends new luster to music that has only rarely been performed in our time.

Angelo Berardi (1636–94) maintained in his day that modern music had reached “greater perfection compared to the past” and that the practice of music was more important than theory; he asserted, moreover, that a good composition should also elevate the soul to virtuous thoughts. In terms of his stylistic profile, Berardi shows great richness of inspiration, so much so that this, his only work assigned to the violin, seems to cover the entirety of the instrument’s abilities and expressive variety.

This fifth Naxos release of the music of the Franco-Lebanese composer Bechara El-Khoury features three concertos two of which, for wind instruments, are inspired by specific associations with the natural world of the composer’s native Lebanon. The First Violin Concerto contains allusions to Alban Berg, its outer movements divided by a virtuoso cadenza for the soloist. The composer describes his powerful Horn Concerto as ‘mountains at night… reaching up into the sky and melting into mist and space’, and the Clarinet Concerto as ‘impressions and recollections in which poetic colors link together and disappear, like an autumnal cloud’.

Jacques Loussier achieved immense worldwide popular success combining the music of J.S. Bach and jazz improvisation with his Play Bach Trio. + Loussier’s focus has since turned more towards composing, his predilection for fusing jazz and classical elements expressed at its most economical in these two Violin Concertos. + Eloquent expressiveness and colorful use of percussion characterize the First Concerto, while the Indian influence in the Second Concerto emerges through violin improvisation and rhythmic counterpoint from the tabla. + Like Loussier, Paderewski was a piano virtuoso who turned to composition in later life, the Violin Sonata being one of his finest earlier works.

Joseph Achron was a child prodigy as a violinist, and despite great success as a composer he considered himself a performer for most of his life. + His most famous composition is the intense and dramatic Hebrew Melody, but the riches in this program range from the deeply passionate early Prelude, the spirit of dance in Les Sylphides, the various moods of the Stimmungen and the theatrical Stempenyu, speculated to be the inspiration for Marc Chagall’s famous painting of a fiddler on the roof. + Achron’s remarkable music fell into obscurity, but its recent revival includes a recording of his First Violin Concerto available on Naxos 8.559408.

James Ehnes presents his third album of chamber works by Bartók. The previous volumes have, along with his outstanding concerto disc, established his formidable reputation as a Bartók interpreter. Here Ehnes is joined by the pianist Andrew Armstrong, violinist Amy Schwartz Moretti, and Michael Collins, one of the world’s leading clarinettists.

The Sonatina, originally composed in 1915 for piano, was based on melodies which Bartók had collected during expeditions in Transylvania. The transcription for violin and piano heard here was produced ten years later by a young student of Bartók’s, Endre Gertler.

Bartók composed Contrasts in 1938 for the jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman and violinist Joseph Szigeti, who originally had requested a work in two movements, each with a cadenza for one of the featured instruments. Fulfilling this request, Bartók added a central slow movement, entitled ‘PihenÅ‘’ (Relaxation). The opening movement, ‘Verbunkos’, alludes to a march-like Hungarian military recruiting dance. The finale, entitled ‘Sebes’ (Quick), is a lively romp at the heart of which lies an unexpected episode of haunting calmness.

Besides writing for such outstanding musicians as Szigeti and Goodman, Bartók composed a lot of music for students, including the Forty-four Duos for two violins recorded here. These short pieces take material from a remarkably wide array of folk traditions and interlink the styles and culture of diverse peoples.

Bach composed these and other famous works, including the Brandenburg Concerti and the Cello Suites, during his Capellmeister years in Anhalt-Cöthen, Saxony, 1717-23. Violinist Hélène Schmitt, a fixture on European stages, mostly plays the solo violin repertoire of the 17th - early 19th century. She shows a special interest in and affinity for Italian and German music and culture. The international critics always receive her concerts and recordings enthusiastically.

This recording presents some of the most beautiful passages in all baroque violin repertoire, combining Italian sensuality with French grace and refinement. Idolised as both performer and composer during his lifetime, Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764) was murdered in circumstances still mysterious. In 2000, violinist Patrick Cohën-Akenine founded Les Folies françoises to tackle a vast baroque instrumental and vocal repertoire with a true chamber music approach.

Violinist Lin He and pianist Gregory Sioles’ recital features the violin and piano sonatas of Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc. +Mr. He serves as the Assoc. Prof. of Violin at the LSU School of Music. +As a soloist and chamber musician, Mr. He has performed in America and China. +Mr. Sioles is Assoc. Prof. of Piano at the LSU School of Music. +He has performed on three continents at such venues as the Kennedy Center, the Purcell Room on London’s South Bank and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in China.