A Tribute to Fritz Kreisler

Lionel Tertis (1876-1975), a great genius of the viola, is little known to today's public. Timothy Ridout pays tribute to this key figure in his instrument's history with a flamboyant program featuring music by Tertis's friends, teachers and students alongside some of his own original works and transcriptions. A marvelous musical journey, rich in discoveries.

Itzhak Perlman: The Complete Warner Recordings embraces every aspect of Perlman's art. It contains concertos (the ‘essential' concertos, of course, but also more rarely-heard works, including Perlman's own commissions from living composers); other pieces for violin and orchestra; chamber music; recital and crossover repertoire (including jazz, ragtime and klezmer), and even a disc that focuses on Perlman as narrator and (briefly) opera singer. The recordings document his collaborations with the world's greatest orchestras and an array of superlative fellow-soloists and conductors, including Martha Argerich, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Plácido Domingo, Carlo Maria Giulini, Bernard Haitink, Lynn Harrell, Yo Yo Ma, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn and Pinchas Zukerman.

Itzhak Perlman, born in 1945, is the supreme violinist of his time. Warner Classics salutes him in his 70th birthday year with Itzhak Perlman: The Complete Warner Recordings, 59 albums on 77 CDs. Presenting his art in all its warmth, generosity and brilliance, this comprehensive edition unites the recordings Perlman made for both EMI and Teldec over a total period of more than 30 years. Available as a magnificent deluxe box set, or as 59 separate releases, Itzhak Perlman: The Complete Warner Recordings embraces every aspect of Perlman s art.

Collected together for the first time are all of RUGGIERO RICCI’s nine solo albums taped for American Decca between 1960 and 1970. The sessions brought concertos by Vivaldi (The Four Seasons with an all-Stradivarius ensemble), Paganini and Saint-Sa?ns as well as several concept albums. ‘The Glory of Cremona’, a recording ‘that all fiddle fanciers will insist on having’ (Stereo Review) saw him play fifteen priceless violins. The 1967 traversal of the complete Bach Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin were described by Gramophone as ‘a miracle’. One of the last century’s most spell-binding technicians on the violin, Ricci was a complete musician, to whom this set pays eloquent tribute.

Violin’s golden age at the dawn of the 20th century saw virtuoso players Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz conquer the concert halls, and witnessed the heady music of Gershwin, Debussy, Satie, Bruch, and company. Ray Chen’s programme places Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 at its center, in a performance of lyrical sweetness, velvet tone, and fierce virtuosity. Surrounding the Concerto, however, are charming salon pieces by Kreisler and Cyril Scott plus four enticing miniatures played by Chen and quartet Made in Berlin, including “A New Satiesfaction,” a play on the music of Erik Satie, with nods to Rossini and Grieg. To finish, a tribute to Chen’s Australian roots in the form of a riotous arrangement of “Waltzing Matilda”.

The six Sonatas for solo violin of Eugène Ysaÿe are essential works in his catalog, inspired by the sonatas and partitas of J.S. Bach, and composed as a tribute to the violinists Joseph Szigeti, Jacques Thibaud, George Enescu, Fritz Kreisler, Mathieu Crickboom, and Manuel Quiroga. These pieces suggest a Janus-like combination of retrospection and the avant-garde, hearkening to the past through allusive figurations and direct quotations (e.g., references in the Sonata No. 2 to Bach's Partita No. 3 and the Dies Irae), but looking to the future in the use of extended violin techniques and novel sonorities. Alina Ibragimova's 2015 release on Hyperion is an absorbing performance, concentrated in tone and accomplished in technique, yet wonderfully ambiguous in expression, in keeping with Ysaÿe's quirky mix of playfulness and high-minded seriousness. Recorded in the concert hall of Wyastone Estate, Monmouth, in May 2014, Ibragimova has great clarity and presence, and the acoustics provide enough resonance to soften the violin's sometimes overly rosinous sound.