Challenge Classics violinist Rudolf Koelman pays a tribute to his teacher Jascha Heifetz. Two late romantic Concertos, full of pathos, rarely performed today. MusicWeb on CC 72736 Prokofiev Violin Concertos with Rudolf Koelman: … these performances are very fine indeed… the more you listen, the better it gets.
Korngold's Violin Concerto was completed in 1945. This is a beautiful, late Romantic work that harks back clearly to Korngold's earlier compositional style, when he was a younger man living in Vienna. But had he really turned his back on film music he was used to composing in America? Every movement of the Concerto is scattered with fragments from a range of his film scores. The Violin Concerto was a huge success at it's premiere, not least due to the performance by Jascha Heifetz as soloist. The 1950s, a period when Korngold's career and indeed his life were drawing to a close, were a most productive time for Leonard Bernstein. He was achieving major successes on Broadway with his musicals. The Serenade for violin, strings, harp and percussion had it's premiere in Venice in 1954. There were two factors behind the composition. He had accepted a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation. Also, he had long been promising a new piece for his close friend, the violinist Isaac Stern. Both of these commitments coincided in the Serenade, an extremely lyrical, five-movement work, akin to the violin concerto.
HALVORSEN Sarabande with Variations. Passsacaglia. Concert Caprice on Norwegian Melodies1. BRUNI 6 Duos Concertants • Natalia Lomeiko (vn); Yuri Zhislin (va, 1vn) • NAXOS 8.572522 (75:04)
Jascha Heifetz played Johann Halvorsen’s Passacaglia with William Primrose. Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman later took it up, and these violinistic celebrities have helped keep the composer’s name before audiences. The Sarabande with Variations, based, like the Passacaglia, on a theme by George Frideric Handel (the Passacaglia takes the Passacaille from Handel’s Keyboard Suite No. 7 as its basis), has not received such frequent attention. It’s longer and perhaps more imposing and requires strong left hands to execute its numerous massive double-stops and chords as well as an agile right one to survey its widely varied bowings. Violinist Natalia Lomeiko and violist Yuri Zhislin take the theme a bit more quickly than audiences familiar with it from its key role in Barry Lyndon might remember, and their subsequent tempos in the variations follow suit, although the duo brings a haunting poignancy and spectral piquancy, respectively, to the two relaxed variations near the work’s center. Despite the power they generate at the end, their approach remains generally light and virtuosic.
In the more popular Passacaglia, they adopt similarly sprightly tempos, and while they may not play with the almost self-conscious though wittily understated virtuosity of Perlman and Zukerman and may not sound so arch as do Heifetz and Primrose, they take greater advantage of the variations’ expressive opportunities. Once again they make a great deal of the more reflective central variation, and their approach to even the most straightforward variations combines flexibility and playfulness, with the concluding variation fusing brilliance with pounding rhythmic insistence. Halvorsen’s invigorating Concert Caprice on Norwegian Melodies (both Lomeiko and Zhislin playing violin) doesn’t enjoy such frequent outings as even the Sarabande, but its straightforward virtuosity (at times it sounds a bit like one of Heinrich Ernst’s variations on The Last Rose of Summer—of course in a setting for two rather than one violin, ostensibly rendering it more playable) should ingratiate it with audiences who enjoy violinistic figuration stretched to accommodate a generously stuffed bag of tricks (Caroline Waight’s notes suggest that the thick textures may have been suggested by the Hardanger fiddle).
By comparison with Halvorsen’s generally effervescent though occasionally darkly hued works, Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni’s Six Duos (Book 4) for violin and viola sound less subtle and surely less virtuosic, though no less straightforwardly melodious and surely no less dramatic (consider the outburst in the middle of the first movement—all of the duos fall into two—of the First Duo). Bruni, who had served as the director of the Opéra-Comique, seems to have drawn on his theatrical experiences in these duos in both their agitato and their cantabile passages—as he also seems to have done in his 25 studies for viola, which should help a violist develop a singing style as well as a basic technical command. Both Lomeiko and Zhislin produce a heavier tonal weight in these works, but they’re also attuned to their melodic elegance and their tantalizing rhythmic playfulness (as in the First Duo’s second movement). Some of the duos (as in the Second’s first movement), on the other hand, sound more earnest or, as in that work’s second movement or the introduction to the Fifth Duo’s opening movement, simply more introspective. But the tone of the Fourth Duo’s suave first movement seems to predominate. Violinist Angelo Cicillini and violist Fabrizio Ammetto included Bruni’s duos on Mondo Musica 96078, which I warmly recommended in Fanfare 23:4; Lomeiko’s and Zhislin’s articulation sounds sharper and their rhythms more pointed, and the recorded sounds at once closer and cleaner, though it has plenty of the warmth radiated by Mondo Musica’s engineers.
Throughout the program, varied though it may be, Lomeiko and Zhislin produce sweetly homogeneous textures that hardly ever sound abrasive, and their ensemble retains its sense of unanimity throughout even the greatest difficulties. Naxos’s lively recorded sound presents both instrumentalists in balanced fidelity with enough reverberation to ensure warmth in addition to clarity. Enthusiastically recommended to all types of listeners.
Double vinyl LP pressing. Emerging triumphant in consistent and spectacular fashion, Itzhak Perlman - always a perceptive musician - also tells a captivating story with every piece. Ever since they were first published in Milan in 1820, the 24 Caprices of Niccolo Paganini have been regarded as the ultimate challenge for any virtuoso violinist. They are provocatively dedicated Agli artisti ('To the artists'), but few of Paganini's contemporaries were able to tackle the multiple technical demands inherent in the most astounding solo violin works yet written. In the 20th century, even allowing for the development of instrumental technique, the advent of modern recording technology and it's editing facilities, few performers in our own age have been brave enough to commit all 24 of the Caprices to disc. The legendary Jascha Heifetz recorded only three, Yehudi Menuhin only six. The Italian maestro Ruggiero Ricci, a life-long advocate of Paganini's music, was the first to set down all 24 on record. But it was Israeli-born Perlman in 1972, then aged 26, who was to make the definitive recording. Almost half a century later, Perlman's recording remains the benchmark by which all others are measured.
The rich musical heritage of the Litvaks is only just beginning to be explored. The music by Jewish composers who were born in, lived in, or emigrated from Lithuania has been lurking in the background for many years. This new creative chapter opens with an album that features two prominent musical figures, the Lithuanian violinist Dalia Dedinskaite and the Canadian pianist Walter Delahunt. Together, they present a musical journey showcasing the creativity of the Litvaks, from Lazdijai in Lithuania to Hollywood in the USA. The album's title, Estrellita (The Star), is not only an allusion to one of it's pieces, but also a multi-sensory symbol. Estrellita, also the Star of David, is a light in the darkness, a star of remembrance. It illuminates the paths of personalities, destinies, and creativity, from those who left to those who stayed. The album Estrellita draws parallels between the lives and works of two legendary 20th-century Litvaks, Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) and Joseph Achron (1886-1943). It also opens up the musical world of Anatolijus Šenderovas (1945-2019), one of the most prominent Lithuanian composers of the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st century.
Walton: Violin Concerto; Portsmouth Point; Suite from Troilu
Chandos
SACD
$21.99Apr 04, 2025
Sinfonia of London and John Wilson start a new series of recordings of works by Sir William Walton with this album featuring Charlie Lovell-Jones as soloist in the Violin Concerto. Lovell-Jones has soloed with major orchestras internationally, broadcasting on radio and television. As leader of the multi-award-winning Sinfonia of London, he has performed at the BBC Proms and recorded numerous albums, and is the winner of a number of significant international competitions. Commissioned by Jascha Heifetz, the Concerto was premiered in 1939, in America, and was enthusiastically received. Inspired by Walton's friend and lover Alice Wimborne, the work is extremely lyrical and passionate in nature, sporting a wild, virtuosic Tarantella as the second movement. Alice was also a driving force behind the inception of Walton's first grand opera, Troilus and Cressida, composed over almost a decade, largely after her untimely death. Here we hear the four-movement orchestral suite compiled in 1987 by Christopher Palmer, at the instigation of Lady Walton and his lifelong publisher OUP. Walton's overture Portsmouth Point is the earliest work on the album, premiered in 1926.
Saint-Saens: Violin Sonata No. 2; Suite In D Minor; The Swan / Clamagirand, Cohen
Naxos
CD
$19.99Sep 24, 2013
Much of the music here would have been more familiar 75 years ago than it is today; Jascha Heifetz, in particular, championed the Saint-Saëns violin sonatas. But now that self-serving ideas of straight-line musical progress have been put to rest, Saint-Saëns is benefiting from something of a comeback, with the Naxos label and others putting out intelligently programmed selections of his music. This one, by French violinist Fanny Clamagirand and pianist Vanya Cohen, is delightful. It features a performance of the Violin Sonata No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 102, overflowing with melody in the slow movement, as well as some even less familiar music. The opening Suite in D minor for violin and piano, Op. 16, is fascinating. Composed in 1862, it represents Saint-Saëns take on the Baroque suite, and one might even say the French neo-classicism began here. There is also a violin sonata Saint-Saëns wrote at the age of 13, a charming piece of juvenilia, and two short works in contrasting modes, a Romance in C major, Op. 48, on the melodic side and a Méditation in quasi-operatic mode. The only really famous tune here is the arrangement for violin and piano of Le Cygne (The Swan), from The Carnival of the Animals; it serves as a kind of encore. As she did on her earlier recording of Saint-Saëns' chamber music, Clamagirand cultivates a lyrical attitude and a gorgeous tone that are the essence of the French school. Naxos deserves kudos for the sound this time out; the music is recorded in a superb (and non-French) venue, the UK's Wyastone Concert Hall, and the performers are up close but not overbearing.
With the advent of stereo recordings in the late 1950s, many important soloists, including Jascha Heifetz, began remaking many of their favorite compositions in stereo that they'd previously recorded only in mono. Between 1961-62, as heard on this Idis CD, Heifetz came back to the studio to re-make three of his most famous pieces he'd previously recorded in mono during the '40s and '50s: Bruch's Concerto no. 1 and the Scottish Fantasy, and Vieuxtemps's Concerto No 5. The CD concludes with Tchaikovsky's Serenade Mélancolique op. 26, in a mono recording from 1954.
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) was a Lithuanian-born violinist, who is considered by many music scholars to have been the greatest violinist of all time. He moved to the United States as a teenager, where his Carnegie Hall debut was famously well-received. A virtuoso since childhood, Fritz Kreisler, another leading twentieth century violinist, wrote upon hearing Heifetz’s debut: “We might as well take our fiddles and break them across our knees.” This is the second volume from DOREMI of monumental 1940s historic broadcasts of Jascha Heifetz, made at the pinnacle of his artistry. This is their first release, and this album was awarded a coveted Diapason d’Or award in France.
Bach: Goldberg Variations; Buxtehude: La capricciosa / Schornsheim
Capriccio
CD
$22.99Sep 09, 2016
German harpsichordist and organist Christine Schornsheim has studied at the Spezialschule fur Musik Berlin, the Hoschshule fur Musik Berlin, and individually under Gustav Leonhardt, Ton Koopman, Johann Sonnleitner, and Andreas Staier. Christine has been an active freelance harpsichordist since 1985. She has appeared at illustrious festivals all over the world, and performs on stages with conductors such as Sir Georg Solti, Claudio Abbado, Peter Schreier, and more. The cornerstone of this work is the Bach Goldberg Variations. Christine writes: “…the Goldberg Variations rank among the most significant works of clavier literature. I listened to my first recording, produced 25 years ago, only to notice that over the course of the years I have remained true to myself in many respects. On the other hand a process of maturation has taken place, the outcome of which I now indeed wanted to document.”
C. P. E. Bach: Rondos & Fantasias / Christine Schornsheim
Capriccio
CD
$21.99Oct 14, 2014
Period instrument keyboard performers, like organists, are severely constrained by the tone of their instruments. Too often we are asked to accept thin, ugly, inexpressive sonorities simply because they allegedly represent historical “truth.” The reality, of course, is that there are good-sounding old instruments and bad-sounding ones. I have had the opportunity to inspect (and play) dozens of them over the years, and having done that I can state categorically that there is simply no excuse for listeners being forced to endure sub-standard instrumental tone whatever the instrument happens to be, especially on recordings.
For this program, Christine Schornsheim has selected an absolutely magnificent tangent piano housed in Schloß Bad Korzingen, one which, along with her scintillating playing, really brings this music to life. Not only does it allow her to sweep up and down the keyboard in those glittering arpeggios with which Bach adorns his Fantasias (try Wq 58/6), but the instrument turns on a dime. It can sustain a tone, or cut it off with amazing abruptness, giving an extra punch to those sudden modulations and changes of timbre and texture that make this music so exciting.
The program is also an unusually interesting one–a selection of Rondos and Fantasias from Bach’s Kenner and Liebhaber series of late keyboard works. The Rondos are supposed to be CPE’s concession to the popular taste, but they are anything but “easy” in the sense that they are often just as virtuosic as anything else that he wrote, and they are not rondos in the classical sense at all. Formally, they are more like variation sets with brief interludes coming between each varied restatement of theme, which may not return in its entirety.
Another noteworthy aspect of this program is that Schornsheim only includes three pieces in minor keys out of a total of thirteen (Wq 59/4, 56/5, and 61/4). So many programs stress the Sturm und Drang aspects of Bach’s music, but this program proves that he could be just as inventive, and unpredictable, writing in a cheerier mood. There are some very substantial works here, packed with colorful contrasts, including the C Major Fantasia Wq 59/6. and the wonderful E Major Rondo Wq 57/1, and Schornsheim plays them all with unaffected mastery and an impish delight in their “what comes next” abruptness. The engineering of her splendid instrument is also drop-dead gorgeous. This is a great recital from start to finish, an aural and expressive delight.
