Emotional Violin

Multi award winning Canadian violinist James Ehnes returns to the greatest body of work for solo violin: Bach’s 6 Sonatas and Partitas.

Sergei Prokofiev first noted down some ideas for his Violin Sonata No.1 in the summer of 1938 and he began the composition that winter. It was later put aside, but when he was evacuated from Moscow after the Nazi invasion 1941, the unfinished violin sonata was one of the pieces Prokofiev took with him. It wasn't until 1946 that he completed the work, however, following it up with the equally dark Sixth Symphony. There is no doubt that it was bitter experience that made these works two of Prokofiev's most powerfully concentrated compositions.

Just 26 years old, Nicola Benedetti has been making chart-topping recordings for 10 years. This album celebrates the best of those recordings, and her other successes – from winning the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition in 2004, to her 2012 best-selling album ‘The Silver Violin’, the highest charting classical instrumental album in the UK of the last two decades. A collection of great violin music – from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending to the Tchaikovsky and Bruch violin concertos and Arvo Part’s Spiegel Im Spiegel. Featuring brand new recordings – Brahms’ invigorating Hungarian Dance no. 5, Monti’s ever-popular Czardas, and Chopin’s emotional Nocturne in C# minor. The album includes Nicola performing with leading orchestras and conductors, as well as some of her favorite chamber players.

By combining the 120 extant measures of Mozart's unfinished Concerto in D major for violin and piano, K. App. 56 (K. 315f) with the Sonata in D major for piano and violin, K. 306, composer Philip Wilby has fashioned a performing version that seems reasonably backed by musical evidence, competent in orchestration, and perhaps ingenious enough to meet the approval of some Mozartians. Unfortunately for listeners seeking a major revelation, this reconstruction is short on the felicitous surprises and touching expressions one might find in a fully conceived work by Mozart, and seems a bit ordinary in substance and artificial in development.