Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto

These are among the most familiar pieces in the entire violin-and-orchestra repertory, and German violinist Arabella Steinbacher even admits in the notes that she had no particular desire to record them. What convinced her, she says, was the chance to work with conductor Charles Dutoit, here leading the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and indeed the reading they produce is an unusually collaborative one. And, as it happens, that of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, is a real winner.

Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian conductor. He was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for 34 years. During the Nazi era, he debuted at the Salzburg Festival, with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, and during World War II he conducted at the Berlin State Opera. Generally regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, he was a controversial but dominant figure in European classical music from the mid-1950s until his death. Part of the reason for this was the large number of recordings he made and their prominence during his lifetime. By one estimate, he was the top-selling classical music recording artist of all time, having sold an estimated 200 million records.

Karajan was unquestionably a great Tchaikovsky conductor. Yet although he recorded the last three symphonies many times, he did not turn to the first three until the end of the 1970s, and then proved an outstanding advocate. In the Mendelssohnian opening movement of the First, the tempo may be brisk, but the music's full charm is displayed and the melancholy of the Andante is touchingly caught.

As part of Deutsche Grammophon’s release of a limited and numbered edition of Claudio Abbado’s complete recordings for DG, Decca and Philips, you can now enjoy Volume 12 in a series of 16 digital albums, which are organised in alphabetical order of composer name. This twelfth digital album presents music by Schumann and Tchaikovsky.

In her third release for EMI Classics the energetic young Norwegian violinist continues the idea of Nordic and Russian concerto pairings established with Sibelius and Prokofiev Concertos on her first album. Here the famous romance of Tchaikovsky’s well-loved violin concerto and Scandinavian poise and unique colouring of Nielsen’s concerto are presented in a rare coupling together on disc.

This album of Russian violin concertos does what many modern orchestras do when programming concert repertoire. That is, feature one quite famous work (in this case, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto) to draw in more tentative patrons, then throw in a few less well-known but still deserving pieces (in this case, the Arensky and Rimsky-Korsakov). This approach is both effective and appropriate. The programming of these three composers is also historically intelligent; Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov were contemporaries, and Arensky was one of Rimsky-Korsakov's many successful students.

Two great and very popular romantic concertos by Tchaikovsky - his first piano concerto and violin concerto, played by two legendary instrumentalists - Georges Cziffra, and Leonid Kogan. Both works got off to an inauspicious start as the dedicatees {Nicholas Rubinstein and Leopold Auer} deemed the works to be awkwardly written and unplayable!