Elgar / Howick / Ekins - Violin Sonata - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The Queen Elisabeth Competition for the violin of 1967 proved to be a fertile year for the massive Soviet delegation that had arrived in the attempt to sweep the competition, already won four years previously by the Russian Alexei Michlin. In the final, three of the four laureates are Latvian, something that could not but ruffle the feathers of the Soviet authorities. Philippe Hirschhorn's first place was beyond doubt, he was more than imperial and playing like that had unquestionably not been heard since Leonid Kogan in 1951. Yet on the third step of the podium the public discovered an extraordinary musician in a young man aged barely twenty Gidon Kremer. He presented an unusual programme, performing the Elgar Concerto, a work rarely played in the final of leading competitions. He was disappointed at his ranking, yet such a nature could not leave the members of the jury indifferent, in one way or another! All of Kremer can already be found in these very first recordings of someone who would mark the history of his instrument for the next 50 years. His playing is nervy, at times abrasive, yet always soulful. There is no sense of artificial beauty with Gidon Kremer; he is a fighter for art, an outstanding musical personality that his subsequent immense career has shown every day.

William Alwyn composed prolifically in virtually all genres, orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental. Like his contemporary Samuel Barber, Alwyn was an unashamed Romantic who preferred his music to appeal to the heart rather than to the head.

Paul Juon's musical education provided him with a direct link to the German Romantic style of Mendelssohn and Schumann, and he has even been called the 'Russian Brahms.' These three violin sonatas represent an important artistic statement by this neglected master, also showing his artistic evolution. The First Sonata is reminiscent of Tchaikovsky in it's melodic beauty, the Second Sonata enriched with Scandinavian flavor in it's mercurial character and chromatic intensity. The masterful and dramatic Third Sonata evokes an epic imagined landscape full of natural and supernatural beings.