Nikolai Roslavets Violin Sonatas Nos. 1, 4 & 6 (solomia Soroka)

This album marks the second release by Polish-born violinist Joanna Kurkowicz to be devoted to the concertos of Grazyna Bacewicz, a violinist/composer who survived World War II and Stalinism with her artistic vision intact. Not only that, she adapted the violin concerto, not a form in great favor in the 20th century, to waves of successive influences. As Eastern Europe emerges as the crucible where musicians tried to build a durable culture out of the 20th century's various musical and political "isms," Bacewicz's music is well worth keeping an eye on.

Pierre Rode was one of the giants of the violin world. He was a performer of superb technique he premièred Beethoven’s last Violin Sonata in Vienna and wrote a large amount of music for his instrument, most prominently 13 concertos. They exhibit the highest qualities of the French School: grace, lyricism, fleetness and fluency. The Third is grandiose and brilliant, the Fourth is tauter and gloriously agile, whilst the Sixth is one of his greatest, most famous and complete statements in the concerto form. The first release in this series, (Concertos Nos. 7, 10 and 13 / 8.570469), earned Friedemann Eichhorn the highest plaudits: “sweetness of phrasing…with the delicacy of a caress while skirting the technical minefields as if they didn’t exist.”

Since his 2007 Cleveland International Piano Competition victory, Alexander Ghindin has attracted attention for the powerful technique, wide dynamic range, and ardent temperament he brings to Russian repertoire, as this Scriabin recital amply bears out. The various Poèmes are massively textured, generously pedaled, and generally quite spacious in relation to, say, Pascal Amoyel's chaster, more classically proportioned interpretations.

Daniel Hope provides a thoughtful and distinctive take on this increasingly familiar music. While his coolly radiant tone can turn fragile and scratchy at times of stress, his interpretations have a patient sobriety recalling David Oistrakh, the great Soviet-era virtuoso to whom the present CD is dedicated.

Composed over wide time intervals, Hans Werner Henze's three Violin Concertos represent key stages of his development, and mark his early efforts in twelve-tone composition, his mature phase of experimental political theater, and his late, emotionally charged programmatic style. The Concerto No. 1 (1948) is similar in some respects to Alban Berg's Violin Concerto, particularly in Henze's blending of the row with tonal features; yet in its comparative leanness and transparency, this piece is less like Berg than the complex Concerto No. 3 (1997), which, in its intense evocation of Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus, shares much more of the passionate and disturbing colors and textures of Wozzeck or Lulu.

Chung’s performance blazes with energy and commitment, and is brilliantly backed up by Solti and the LPO. If the violinist errs at all, it is in trying to put swagger into the opening subject of the first movement by leaning into its accents and dishing out some rather heavy portamento. The result sounds unduly Romanticized. But in the rapt second movement Chung is exquisite, and she turns in an electrifying account of the finale, abetted by Solti’s energetic prodding of the orchestra.

Chances are if you have heard of Austrian composer Egon Wellesz at all, it has been through his association with Arnold Schoenberg. Wellesz, the same age as Alban Berg, was one of Schoenberg's earliest students and wrote the first book-length biography of the composer in 1921, a study that both posterity and its subject regarded as something of a classic.

Following their acclaimed first instalment of Franz Joseph Haydn’s six Op. 20 string quartets, the Dudok Quartet Amsterdam returns with the remainder of the works from this hugely significant collection – the E-flat major, D major and A major quartets. Earning Haydn the title of the ‘father of the string quartet’, these works are said to have defined the medium for the next 200 years. It is in his lauded Op. 20, where Haydn connects old and new worlds and creates an all-encompassing universe.

Mozart's violin sonatas come mostly from the first part of his career and probably wouldn't have been counted by the composer among his most significant works. They're transitional between the configuration of piano with optional violin accompaniment and that with the violinist in the lead; pianist Cédric Tiberghien here properly receives top billing, and he catches the right balance with violinist Alina Ibragimova.