Vieuxtemps

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.

After her last two albums of completely new compositions, “Silfra” and “In 27 Pieces – The Hilary Hahn Encores”, Hilary returns with classic-romantic repertoire. Two-times Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn now combines Mozart’s beloved Concerto in A, K 219 – with its fiery “Turkish” episode – with the rich, virtuosic romanticism of Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No. 4.

Vieuxtemps was a towering figure in the long line of master 19th-century violinist composers, from Viotti, Rode, Bériot and Paganini to Wieniawski, Kreisler and Ysaÿe, and one of the first to use the full Romantic orchestral palette in the composition of works with soloist.

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.

The violin concertos of Belgian-born composer/virtuoso Henri Vieuxtemps have been recorded by various players, including the young Russian-American virtuoso Misha Keylin heard here. But these shorter pieces, which would have been the stock-in-trade of Vieuxtemps' active touring life (during one American tour he made 121 appearances in six months, without benefit of planes, automobiles, or in many cases trains), are a good deal rarer. They don't have the main virtue of the concertos, which is that there's a certain amount of structural interest to go with the Paganini-like fireworks, but they're a great deal of fun.

Winner of the 2014 Cecil Aronowitz International Viola Competition, Timothy Ridout, joins together with his pianist duo partner, Ke Ma, to record his debut CD with Champs Hill Records. This disc, which is the result of Timothy’s success at the CAIVC, presents the complete Viola works of Henri Vieuxtemps and includes two sonatas, small virtuoso gems and an Etude. Timothy Ridout says of the disc: “Henri Vieuxtemps was one of the greatest violin virtuosi of the 19th century, and as a boy was compared to Paganini, though his compositions often neglected. I believe this is largely due to the fact that he is thought of as a composer solely for the violin, writing music filled with pyrotechnics. However this isn’t true. Vieuxtemps also loved the viola, and it is in his viola works that his lyrical, operatic style is most apparent.”

Hyperion’s blossoming Romantic Cello Concerto series welcomes back German virtuoso Alban Gerhardt for this sixth volume. Henry Vieuxtemps and Eugène Ysaÿe are of course best known for their blistering pyrotechnics on the violin, but each of this eminent teacher-and-pupil pairing also wrote two works—little known today, alas—for cello and orchestra, and what a revelation they are. The two Vieuxtemps Concertos contain all the elements familiar from their famous violin counterparts—long-arched melodies alongside moments of outrageous virtuoso demands. The Ysaÿe works are shorter and make ideal companions.