Daniel Hope Dance

Daniel Hope's new album "Dance!" reflects his boundless interest in the most diverse styles and periods of music. The star violinist takes the listeners on a journey through seven centuries of music history and explores the rhythms that have set bodies in motion and lifted hearts since time began.

Daniel Hope has long been fascinated by the power of dance to move and inspire. Taking listeners on a journey through seven centuries of music history, his latest Deutsche Grammophon album – DANCE! – celebrates the rhythms that have set bodies in motion and lifted hearts since time began. A magical, passionate, pulsating tour through history, Daniel Hope’s Dance! runs the gamut of western classical music from medieval times to the late 20th century. Dance touches everybody’s lives, and has always been deeply intertwined with music – as you can hear in Hope’s thoughtfully curated collection which spans seven centuries, including everything from a 14th-century lament to Wojciech Kilar’s 1986 work Orawa, via classics by Handel, Saint-Saëns, Florence Price, Duke Ellington, and many others.

Any album titled "East Meets West" may raise suspicions of crossover commercialism, and purists may reject this disc as a contrived hybrid of classical and international genres. But violinist Daniel Hope presents a program that is much more than a superficial exercise in multiculturalism, and his selections reveal the exotic impulses that touched many composers in the twentieth century. While Ravi Shankar's Raga Piloo and Swara-Kakali overtly reach westward, particularly in the employment of a violin with the Indian sitar, tabla, and tanpura, Ravel's Tzigane, de Falla's Suite populaire espagnol, and Bartók's Romanian Folk Dances are more dispersed in their regional influences and certainly suggest no connections with Asia.

Violinist and composer Joseph Joachim was a central figure of Romanticism, famous as a personal friend of Johannes Brahms and as an arbiter of musical taste who was professionally associated with many of the 19th century's greatest musicians. Daniel Hope's The Romantic Violinist: A Celebration of Joseph Joachim paints an appealing portrait through selections of Joachim's own music, as well as short pieces by Brahms, Clara Schumann, Antonin Dvorák, Franz Schubert, and the Violin Concerto No. 1 by Max Bruch.

Daniel Hope’s declared aim is to trace the development of the Baroque violin, mainly through four composers – three Italian, one German. This throws up some fascinating, sometimes extraordinary, pieces. Among the few surviving works of the Dresden composer Westhoff are a set of amazingly coloured sonatas with movements imitating bells, a lute, and a battle. Among a kaleidoscope of brief pieces are two complete concertos, one by Telemann, the other Geminiani’s arrangement of a Corelli sonata, stylishly accompanied by Hope’s five string colleagues and continuo.

As a Chilean-born composer and pianist living in Australia, I have nurtured a penchant for bringing Latin American vernacular music into the classical concert hall. Both of these musical traditions are widespread and possess an immense canon fashioned by many an inspired composer. Just as significant, both have been greatly impacted by a myriad of interactions with vernacular music over several centuries. A brief survey of the Western tradition may identify composers such as Mozart and Beethoven engaging with Turkish music, Bartók with Eastern European folk music, or Bizet and Debussy with Spain.

Daniel Lozakovich’s rich, romantic style of playing often sees him likened to the iconic violinists of the 20th century. On his latest album, Spirits, he celebrates some of his forebears in the hope of passing on their style and repertoire to younger generations. “When I hear these violinists play I understand why the violin is my life”, he says. Partnered by pianist Stanislav Soloviev, Lozakovich performs favourite encores by Elgar, Debussy, Falla, Gluck, Brahms and Kreisler.