Shostakovich / Roth / Sanderling / London Symphony - Shostakovich & Tchaikovsky: Violin Concertos - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

Shostakovich / Ndr Elbphilharmonie Orchester - Shostakovich Violin Concertos 1 & 2 [SUPER-AUDIO CD] Hybrid SACD date 12/09/2016

The violin competition of 1971 marked a first in the history of the competition, as it was a woman who won the First Prize, the Israeli Myriam Fried, who led the way for many other female laureates. That year, the public discovered a young woman from Ghent, timid and outstandingly gifted Edith Volckaert. She had already won several international competitions, and, with her amazing gifts, had been following since the age of six the classes of one who would be her only teacher the pedagogue and soloist Carlo Van Neste. She came fifth in the competition, ending her performance of Shostakovich's First Concerto in a state of exhaustion before the man who first performed it and now jury member David Oistrakh. On this album she can also be heard in the laureates' concert where, now rested, she produced a magnificent performance of Bartok's Second Concerto. The career of Edith Volckaert was shattered 20 years later by an illness that came far too early. She recorded little, and this album enables us to pay homage to her art and to bring back to life what remains one of the finest moments in the history of Belgian laureates at the Queen Elisabeth Competition.

NOR59 String Institute was originally founded in 1972 as Nordstrandhogda String Orchestra, an amalgamation of several school orchestras from local schools in the Nordstrand area of Oslo, Norway. In 2009 Thorn Magnus Reymert took over as conductor. At that time the orchestra consisted of 12 members. Reymert had high ambitions and a desire to create a large and unique orchestral environment. A focus on recruitment was initiated, and today the orchestra has 130 members divided into five levels chamber, main, junior, aspirant, and pre-aspirant orchestras. Diversity is a key value in NOR59, something which is consciously developed in order to create an orchestral environment where everyone has the opportunity to participate regardless of their particular background. The musicians on this album are between 13 and 17 years old. For this album, the orchestra has chosen works by Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich for an exciting Russian programme.