Violin Arrangements

This disc has a lot going for it. Thomas Zehetmair is a world-renowned violinist; the Amsterdam Bach Soloists comprise a little over a dozen players from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra; and while they perform on modern instruments, they adhere largely to historically informed performance practice. Thus, we get the best of all worlds: world-class playing; smooth, mellifluous sound; and convincing interpretations.

For most listeners, the great thing here will be the 1952 recording of Sibelius' Violin Concerto with soloist Camilla Wicks accompanied by Sixten Ehrling leading the Stockholm Radio Symphony. An American born in Long Beach, CA, of Norwegian stock, the young Wicks was so deeply, passionately, and completely under the skin of the concerto that a more sympathetic and exciting performance of the work is hard to imagine.

Tasmin Little and her accompanist Piers Lane begin this most generous recital disc (comprising 72 minutes of music) in commanding style, with an appropriately gradiloquent account of Kreisler's Praeludium and Allegro. The playing is committed and demonstrative, although Little is less convincing in the other Kreisler work, the Caprice viennois, where her vocalization and sense of timing lack that special Viennese charm so characteristic of Kreisler's original compositions.

I'm afraid that understates the ethereal quality of Bell's extraction of living musical notes from his Stradivarius. The spiritual oneness that happens with a virtuoso and his/her instrument is what makes the connection between the listener and the player. The instrument becomes a unique voice that communicates the essence of music, which itself, is an extension of the writer.

A violonist, she won a first prize with distinction at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Lyon in 2003, with R.Dugareil, then A.Roussin as masters. She later attended advanced violin classes at the Rotterdams Conservatorium under the guidance of J.J. Kantorow, then a series of chamber music classes at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris with E.Bellocq, J.J. Kantorow and R.Dyedns.

The Russian composer Yevgeny Zemtsov (1940–2016) may be as well known for the dynasty of musicians – most of them violists – that he fathered than he is for his own music. This first album ever to be devoted to his compositions features works from the beginning and end of his career: a with some early violin works, influenced by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, a Bartókian string quartet, three spirited and spiky piano miniatures, an oblique piano elegy and five late, enigmatic, almost ritualistic settings of Japanese haikus. Late in life, too, he discovered a fascination with tango, and the album also features his elegant arrangements for string quartet of two Piazzolla favourites.

Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born American violinist and composer. One of the most noted violin masters of his day, and regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately recognizable as his own. Although it derived in many respects from the Franco-Belgian school, his style is nonetheless reminiscent of the gemütlich (cozy) lifestyle of pre-war Vienna.