Romantic Violin

Hyperion’s record of the month for May heralds a new collaboration with the brilliant young British violinist Chloë Hanslip, the former child prodigy famously signed to Warner Classics at the age of just fourteen. Here, she lends her now-mature talents to the second release in Hyperion’s overview of Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concertos and Volume 12 of the burgeoning Romantic Violin Concerto series.

Hyperion’s Romantic Violin Concerto series reaches volume 8 and the music of the Belgian composer Henry Vieuxtemps, himself widely considered the finest violinist in Europe after the death of Paganini. Listening to the repertoire recorded here, he certainly deserves to be ranked among the most important composers for the violin in the mid-nineteenth century. Vieuxtemps never indulged in sheer virtuosity for its own sake; instead in his concertos and chamber works he brought a more classical dimension to the violin repertoire in place of the technically brilliant variations and fantasies on popular operatic themes that were so popular with audiences.

Hyperion’s Record of the Month for April is the fourth volume in the burgeoning ‘Romantic Violin Concerto’ series. The central work on the disc is Moritz Moszkowski’s C major Violin Concerto, a full-blooded Romantic work which demands exceptional virtuosity. An increasing number of recordings, many on the Hyperion label, of this composer’s music have done much to lift his reputation beyond that of the ‘trifling miniaturist’, and the Ballade in G minor amply demonstrates how even a small canvas can aspire to advanced heights of pyrotechnic wizardry.

Ferdinand David is principally known today as the dedicatee of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto; he gave the premiere of the work in 1845. But in his time he was also celebrated as a composer, and Hyperion is delighted to present this disc of world premiere recordings as Volume 9 in the Romantic Violin Concerto series.

In this volume of Hyperion’s Romantic Violin Concerto series, we journey to Poland (in the company of a conductor from that country) for two concertos by Młynarski and two works for violin and orchestra by Zarzycki (who will be familiar to Romantic Piano Concerto collectors).

The Romantic Violin Concerto series reaches Belgium and the music of Joseph Jongen, a composer more celebrated for his organ music now, but who was equally admired in his day for his orchestral and chamber works. Jongen studied at the Liège Conservatoire where he heard the great violinist Eugène Ysaÿe and composer-conductors Vincent d’Indy and Richard Strauss.

Hyperion has brought together two fetching, large-scale pieces by Charles Villiers Stanford for its “The Romantic Violin” series. Both are mature works, written in 1888 and 1899 during Stanford’s “high noon”, when the Cambridge-based Irishman was winning acclaim at home and abroad as a leading British composer. The earlier Suite was written for his mentor, the great German violinist Joseph Joachim. It’s a piece of considerable beauty, both an homage to past musical styles and a tune-filled example of highbrow populism that repays multiple hearings. It begins with a nod to Bach’s solo violin music, and the titles of some movements (as well as their music)–such as Allemande and Tambourine–continue the Baroque-style tribute. Though longish (just shy of half-an-hour), it never overstays its welcome.

Hyperion is pleased to present a thirteenth volume of the Romantic Violin Concerto. Although frequently featuring virtuoso showpieces by the composer–violinists of the nineteenth century, this series also includes works of great musical interest which for one reason or another have not entered the repertoire. The performance history of all three pieces recorded here is indissolubly linked with the turmoil of Schumann’s last years.

This disc juxtaposes two significant Russian works for violin and orchestra, each written by a composer with a close relationship to Tchaikovsky, and each dedicated to the great violinist and pedagogue Leopold Auer. These two concertos are both formidable display pieces, designed to show off Auer’s transcendental technique. Ilya Gringolts, acclaimed as one of the great young violin virtuosos of today and lauded for his debut recording on Hyperion, dazzles in this repertoire, ably supported by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov.

Hyperion’s Romantic Violin Concerto series reaches its tenth volume, and turns to two composers based in England, and works by them which have lain hidden for decades. This disc provides a fascinating glimpse of musical history and the shifting fashions of the age which made fame such a fleeting thing for so many composers.