Ehnes

The last of his orchestral compositions and one of his most enduringly popular pieces, Mendelssohn's violin concerto is as much a crowd-pleaser now as it was when premiered by Ferdinand David and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1845. Its unassuming focus on melody and dynamic interaction between soloist and orchestra – rather than merely on technical feats and virtuosic showmanship – ensures its place at the heart of the violin concerto repertoire.

This two-disc set marks the beginning of a new project devoted to Tchaikovsky's ballet scores. We start the survey with the complete score of The Sleeping Beauty, recorded on SACD. Swan Lake and The Nutcracker will follow in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Tchaikovsky was approached by the Director of the Imperial Theatres in St Petersburg, Ivan Vsevolozhsky, in 1888 about a possible ballet adaptation of Charles Perrault's La Belle au bois dormant (The Sleeping Beauty).

Vivaldi, Tartini & Leclair - The Four Seasons, The Devil's Trill, Tambourin Sonata - James Ehnes (2015) {ONYX Classics 4134}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 349 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 167 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 34 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2015 ONYX Classics | ONYX 4134
Classical / Baroque / Violin

Violinist James Ehnes has firmly established himself as a master of the modern repertoire and to a lesser extent, the Romantic, so his album of Antonio Vivaldi's perennial violin concertos, The Four Seasons, Giuseppe Tartini's "Devil's Trill" Sonata, and Jean-Marie Leclair's "Tambourin" Sonata is an unexpected detour into the Baroque. The fame and popularity of these pieces guarantees Ehnes an audience, and he, like everyone else, shouldn't be criticized for recording them, though his choice of the modern Sydney Symphony Orchestra for the Vivaldi, and Fritz Kreisler's arrangement of the Tartini for violin and piano, suggests that he isn't really trying to compete with most contemporary recordings, least of all the various period-style releases.

The music on this Onyx release wasn't conceived as a single presentation: the three works were recorded in Seattle, Detroit, and Monmouth (U.K.), over a period spanning almost a year and a half, and there are two violin concertos, performed respectively with the Seattle and Detroit Symphonies, and a programmatic violin-and-piano piece.

James Ehnes picks up the viola for his first recording of the two Brahms sonatas Op.120 of 1894, in the composer's arrangement for viola and piano. Originally written for clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, Brahms made subtle changes for the viola versions, and in so doing he greatly enriched the meagre viola sonata repertoire with these two late masterpieces. Schumann composed his Märchenbilder (Fairy Tale Pictures) in a few days in March 1851. They are imbued with a potent sense of fantasy - imagination runs riot, from melancholy to drama. James Ehnes plays on the 1696 'Achinto' Stradivari viola for this recording, courtesy of the Royal Academy of Music.