Leila Josefowicz Solo

You'd get differing answers to the question of whether John Adams is America's greatest living composer, but he's the one to whom the country turned in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The demand for new work from him has only increased since he achieved senior citizen status. Fortunately, he's been able to meet that demand with distinctive large-scale works. Consider 2016's Scheherazade.2, recorded here by the violinist who premiered the work, Leila Josefowicz, with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under David Robertson. The piece succeeds on several levels. It is, outwardly, as close as Adams has come to writing a big Romantic violin concerto, and it will no doubt be welcomed into the concert repertory as such. Yet go into it more deeply, and it seems less a concerto than – well, what, exactly? Adams calls it a "dramatic symphony." English critic Nick Breckenfield has compared it to Berlioz's Harold in Italy, with the soloist representing an individual making her way through a series of adventures that may have a threatening tinge.

American violinist Leila Josefowicz has performed John Adams’ 1993 Violin Concerto almost 100 times. It’s a work that makes huge technical and expressive demands on the soloist, and Josefowicz squares up admirably to the challenges. The restless, 15-minute opening movement is a vehicle for her dazzling, rhapsodic solo playing, as she flits here and there, anchored by the steady rhythms of the orchestra. Ancient meets modern when Adams then toys with the Chaconne form—Josefowicz soaring sweetly, mournfully above a recurring bass—before the final visceral, fiery moto perpetuo movement that grows ever more frenzied as it races to its climactic bars.

Ilya Gringolts made a splash with his CD of the Paganini D Major Concerto, so it's no surprise that he excels in these fiendishly difficult solo pieces, including one of his own. His playing is dazzling, secure even in the most tortuous passages. The Hindemith sonatas are abstract, anti-Romantic works.