Glazunov/Schoeck: Violin Concertos

"The sound quality throughout is big, warm and close - a superb job has been done by Andrew Keener and Ben Connellan. The engineering forms a perfectly adroit complement to the demands of these sunset works in performances that seem faithfully to emote the composers' intentions. In a word: glorious."
(Recording of the Month MusicWeb March 2013)

The brilliant young violinist Chloë Hanslip has recorded another volume of Hyperion's Romantic Violin Concerto series, and displays her usual insouciant virtuosity and obvious delight in the music.

Glazunov's Violin Concerto, written for Leopold Auer, is a masterpiece of violin writing, including a brilliantly effective cadenza by the composer himself. As Hans Keller wrote, 'Glazunov created an almost perfect concerto-instrumentally, the best I know amongst pianists' violin concertos'.

Swiss composer Othmar Schoek is probably best known for his Lieder. His Concerto quasi una fantasia in B flat major, Op 21, for violin and full orchestra is his most substantial concert work. The lyric passion and attractiveness of the work's ideas earn it a distinguished place among the violin concertos of the immediate pre-World War I period.