Bender

Respighi’s orchestral music is loved for its lavish, operatic ‘fireworks’, its pomp and circumstance. This recording of his music for violin and piano demonstrates a more tender and intimate side to the composer, and also shows what a master he was of melody. Respighi had many influences from all over Europe and an enthusiasm for German music which perhaps explains the pleasing echoes of Brahms and Schumann among others. The sonatas, especially the later in B minor, are important works of nineteenth-century chamber music, and gems such as the Valse caressante and the Serenata are suffused with lyrical elegance which is perfectly carried off by the wonderful violinist Tanja Becker-Bender.

The German violinist Tanja Becker-Bender burst onto the recording scene with a dazzling set of Paganini’s Caprices which thrilled the critics. She appears here in a second disc for Hyperion with her compatriot, Markus Becker, who has made two acclaimed recordings for the label. Erwin Schulhoff: jazz enthusiast, sometime Dadaist, surrealist and committed communist. These are some of the labels that spring to mind for this extraordinary figure, but Schulhoff was a more complex and wide-ranging musician than any neat tags suggest. This Prague-born prodigy had an intensive training rooted in the Austro-German tradition from before the age of ten, and later studied with Max Reger and Fritz Steinbacher. His music is impossible to pin down stylistically – even at a particular stage of his career. His music for violin is often outrageously virtuosic and never less than fascinating.

Max Reger - Violin Concerto in A major, Op 101 / Two Romances for violin and small orchestra, Op 50
Tanja Becker-Bender / Konzerthausorchester Berlin / Lothar Zagrosek
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 402 MB | Full Artwork: 76 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Hyperion "The Romantic Violin Concerto" # CDA67892 | Country/Year: UK 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

…Performed by violinist Tanja Becker-Bender and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, conducted by Lothar Zagrosek, the Violin Concerto is grandiose, lush, and expansive, epitomizing the post-Romantic preferences for large-scale forms, luxurious orchestration, and densely wrought ideas, while the Two Romances are comparatively modest in their length and transparent in content. (…) the orchestra sounds gorgeous, and the careful microphone placement keeps Becker-Bender front and center, so the elaborate scoring doesn't drown out her sound.