Enrico Pace

Collections of encores are commonplace in the recording catalogs, but violinist Leonidas Kavakos comes up with something new here: a collection of showstoppers. With a couple of little Russian tunes from Stravinsky to ramp up, and Fritz Kreisler's arrangement of Dvorák's Humoresque in G flat major, Op. 101, No. 7, to wind things down, the rest is a nonstop cavalcade of extreme violin, with the various national traditions of the great virtuosos (Sarasate, Wieniawski) and composer showpieces (Richard Strauss and, unexpectedly, Benjamin Britten) providing variety.

Cellist Sung-Won Yang’s debut album entirely devoted to Kodály was “the editor’s choice of the month” Gramophone Magazine and “critic’s choice of the year” Gramophone Magazine in the UK (2003). Since then, intelligence and originality of his interpretation and play have been world-widely praised by both the critics and the music fans, and have led him to appear on such prestigious venues as the Lincoln Center, the Salle Pleyel, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Royal Concertgebouw. Especially, his complete recording series of Kodály, Beethoven Sonatas/Variations, Brahms/Schumann for cello and piano, Bach’s 6 suites for solo cello, Beethoven trios (either for EMI or Decca/Universal) received international recognition.

The influence of the music by Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) on contemporaneous composers and on those who worked even between the seventeenth and eighteenth century was truly important. For the necessarily synthetic itinerary delineated in this CD I was inspired by four exemplary compositions excerpted from “Fiori Musicali”. This collection was printed in 1635. In it, the composer proposes works conceived for liturgical use (plus two pieces without a precise collocation within the Mass). These pieces are excerpted from the so-called “Messa della Madonna”, and are a Toccata avanti la Messa, Canzon dopo l’Epistola, Recercar dopo il Credo, Toccata per la Levatione.