Violin Concerto Beethoven

Immensely gifted emerging artist" (New York Times) Daniel Lozakovich has been dreaming about recording the Beethoven Violin Concerto since he was eight. He first performed it on stage when he was thirteen, and at fifteen was invited by Valery Gergiev to perform the concerto with him in Moscow. A few short years later, he has reunited with his mentor Gergiev to record the Beethoven with the Mnchner Philharmoniker for Deutsche Grammophon.

This recording of one of Beethoven's most melodious scores has been a favorite of mine since it first appeared in vinyl many years ago. It has long been superseded in popularity perhaps even critical acclaim by Kremer's later, grander, more conventional effort with Harnoncourt conducting on Teldec. Philips, to my knowledge, never saw fit to re-issue it on CD; it is now beind done so, under license by Arkiv, though preserving the Philips artwork but not the notes. The sound retains the warmth and clarity of the original, bright early-digital recording.

Some people still see the name Reger and are afraid to listen to the music because of all the preconceptions about it: It is dense, it is highly contrapuntal, it is harmonically wandering, it is difficult. Certainly there are works written by the great Bavarian composer Hindemith called him “the last giant in music” that could be considered virtually all of those things. And there are works by him by virtually every great composer one can name—that are less inspired, less interesting, that simply work less well than others.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the world premiere of Elgar’s Violin Concerto which took place on 10 November 1910 and was conducted by the composer himself, celebrated Danish violinist Nikolaj Znaider has recorded the concerto on the very same instrument that Kreisler performed the premiere: this is the first account on disc using this very special violin, a 1741 Guarneri del Gesu. Znaider will also tour the work globally throughout 2010 and will perform the Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Colin Davis on 10 November 2010 at London’s Barbican Concert Hall – the anniversary to the day of the world premiere.

“This album presents the core of the violin repertoire – Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Kreutzer Sonata,” says Nemanja Radulović. While these Beethoven masterpieces have been recorded countless times, Radulović’s approach to each of them has an element of innovation. For the concerto, he has expanded Double Sens, the chamber ensemble he founded in 2008. “I wanted to retain the special character of Double Sens as an ensemble which plays without a conductor and explores new ways of interpretation … In our recording of the concerto, we wanted to convey a range of emotions – courage, risk, joy, love, rage, sadness, nostalgia, and magical serenity and tenderness.”

Lorenzo Gatto's 2014 release on Outhere signals his return to classical performance, following popular successes with his crossover violin group, Trilogy. Yet because Gatto has been firmly grounded in classical music since childhood, recording Beethoven's Violin Concerto and the two Romances is a homecoming only in a technical sense, since he plays with the ease and mastery of one who has spent years living with these works. Accompanied by Benjamin Levy and the Orchestre de Chamber Pelléas, Gatto delivers an expansive and spirited reading of the Violin Concerto, giving the music natural elegance in his clean phrasing and pure tone, and high energy in his virtuosic displays. The Romances are long-breathed and lyrical, and with the orchestra's stirring performance of the Overture to the Creatures of Prometheus, this is a well-balanced program that shows Gatto's and Levy's excellent taste and superb musicianship.

This unusual coupling works surprisingly well, God only knows why. Perhaps the Britten’s neo-classical (or Baroque) leanings and formal freedom sit well next to Beethoven’s echt-Classical language, but whatever the reason the performances of both works are extremely fine. Paavo Järvi’s expertise in Beethoven with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen is by now well-known, and in Janine Jansen he has a soloist who matches him for vibrancy and freshness.

The violin concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven and Alban Berg are, on the surface, more different from one another than two compositions could ever probably be. Yet both stand as titans within the violin repertoire and broke incredibly significant new ground. Beethoven's lone Violin Concerto was different than anything that came before it and set the tone for virtually every concerto written after it for nearly a century.

In this new concerto album one of the greatest violinists of our time, Christian Tetzlaff, performs two standard violin concertos in fresh new interpretations together with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin directed by the orchestra’s exciting new music director, Robin Ticciati. Both Ludwig van Beethoven and Jean Sibelius made outstanding contributions to the history of music as great symphonists. Both composers also wrote a violin concerto – Beethoven wrote his D major concerto in 1806, Sibelius his D minor concerto a century later.