Emotional Violin

This EMI Angel release Barber & Shostakovich: Violin Concertos places a new package on a time-honored item, the Barber and Dmitry Shostakovich violin concerti as interpreted by violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg with the London Symphony Orchestra led by Maxim Shostakovich. It originally came out in 1992, and the original release, while it was no "Chant," proved a dependable seller. By reducing the price and putting it into a new package, EMI Angel might seem to be hoping to attract buyers who missed it the first time around, but this is a special case in that it is making available again what may have been the finest recording made by Salerno-Sonnenberg under the terms of her EMI contract.

Kerson Leong recently participated in the award-winning Tribute to Ysaÿe (FUG758). Here is his first solo recital for Alpha. The young Canadian violinist’s career began at the age of thirteen when he won the First Prize of the Junior division of the Menuhin Competition in Oslo in 2010. In 2018 he was named artist-in-residence with the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. An associate musician at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, under the mentorship of Augustin Dumay, he has already performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Verbier Festival and Wigmore Hall. The Quebec newspaper Le Devoir, which has followed him since the start of his career, speaks of ‘the purity of intonation, the brilliance of the high notes, the power of the sound… Kerson Leong has remained as brilliant as ever, but he has added a new patina and, deep down inside himself, a new class.’

The music of Johannes Brahms has long been close to Emmanuel Tjeknavorian's heart. Now, with the WDR Symphony Orchestra under Cristian Măcelaru, he has recorded Brahms' Violin Concerto and Zwei Gesänge,op. 91 with Anna Lucia Richter and Andreas Haefliger. On this album he not only plays the violin, but also the viola.

In celebration of Ralph Vaughan Williams's 150th anniversary celebrations in 2022, this album will give listeners a full insight into the composer's works for violin and piano, played by Midori Komachi (violin) and Simon Callaghan (piano), who are both internationally noted for their performances and research of 20th-century British music.

The Baroque dream team of Rachel Podger and Kristian Bezuidenhout interpret the astonishing music of C.P.E. Bach’s Violin Sonatas in C Minor, B Minor, D Major and G Minor. The two early sonatas here from the 1730s resemble the older style of his father. Listening to these works, you can imagine J.S. Bach glancing over Emanuel's shoulders while he wrote them as a teenager at home in Leipzig. The later sonatas, written 30 to 50 years later, reveal an emancipated composer whose developed musical language embodies the 'Empfindsamer Stil', the directly emotional and rhetorical style characteristic of northern-german music of the time.