Romantic Violin

Reger is one of those composers more talked about than listened to—caricatured as a prolific writer of organ music with a penchant for dense musical textures. But he certainly wasn’t averse to a good tune: the two Romances abound in lush lyricism, while the magnificent A major Violin Concerto shows him continuing in the tradition of the violin concertos of Beethoven and Brahms. An unashamedly symphonic work, it’s nearly an hour long—around the same length as the nearly-contemporary Elgar Violin Concerto. No less a figure than Adolf Busch championed it—first performing it when he was just sixteen.

Much of the Romantic Violin Concerto series on the Hyperion label has focused on forgotten composers, but the present release involves little-known concertos by major composers. The Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 8, by Richard Strauss was written when the composer was 17 and is a competent if rather overlong essay in the virtuoso German tradition running back to Ludwig Spohr. Ferruccio Busoni's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35a, although Busoni was in his thirties when the work was premiered in 1897, might also be called an early work; the characteristic influences from Bach and Liszt (and the mixture of the two) are not yet present.

Israeli-born Hagai Shaham here completes his survey of Hubay’s violin concertos, with these immaculate accounts of Nos 1 & 2. Hubay is widely acknowledged as the founder of the ‘Hungarian school’ of violin playing. His list of protégées includes the virtuoso violinist Ilona Fehér who went on to teach Hagai Shaham. The sonorous, round and broad tone that is the main beauty of the Hubay-school is unmistakable in Shaham’s performance.

There is, of course, no shortage of Romantic-era violin concertos in the instrument's standard repertoire. None of them found with any regularity on the concert stage, however, hail from Denmark. This DaCapo album demonstrates that there are indeed examples that come to us from the Scandinavian country, and even that some of them are inexplicably excluded from the modern canon.

Born in Croydon in 1875, the son of a Sierra Leone-born doctor and English mother, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s childhood was a tough one. Yet, aged 15, he entered the Royal College of Music and studied composition with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. The interest generated by the music of ‘this new black Mahler’ soon put him on the musical map, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast being described as ‘one of the most remarkable events in modern English musical history’. In 1904, at a time when it was still extremely hard for black Americans to fulfil their cultural aspirations, he accepted an invitation to America and found himself hailed as an iconic figure. Throughout his short life he found his role as composer complemented by one as political activist fighting against racial prejudice.

Award-winning violinist Jack Liebeck brings his impassioned tones, fulsome emotional display and formidable technique to the first of three albums of music by Max Bruch.

Hubay’s 3rd concerto mirrors the format of the piano concertos of Liszt (with whom he studied composition) in that it is performed without a break between the movements. The 4th concerto adheres to a more traditional baroque format regarding structure, melody and harmony, hence it’s title. The third work on the disc comprises a theme and twelve variations. All three works are virtuosic display pieces comparable to the concertos of Wieniawski and Vieuxtemps, and call for much pyrotechnics from the soloist.

The brilliant young violinist Chloë Hanslip has recorded another volume of Hyperion’s Romantic Violin Concerto series, and displays her usual insouciant virtuosity and obvious delight in the music. Glazunov’s Violin Concerto, written for Leopold Auer, is a masterpiece of violin writing, including a brilliantly effective cadenza by the composer himself. As Hans Keller wrote, ‘Glazunov created an almost perfect concerto—instrumentally, the best I know amongst pianists’ violin concertos’.

Bruch, Strauss and Busoni one would think that the works of such famous composers have all appeared on recordings. There are still a number of gaps, however, which come to light time and again. These three violin concertos are absent or only weakly represented in current recording catalogs; one can rightly speak of them as discoveries. Bruch’s Second Violin Concerto, although much more interesting than his Concerto in G Minor, has long remained in its shadow.