Singelee / Wood / Dykstra - Opera Fantasies for Violin & Piano 2 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Singelee / Wood / Dykstra - Opera Fantasies For Violin & Piano 1 [COMPACT DISCS] date 02/03/2017

The most comprehensive collection ever issued of the recorded art of Herman Krebbers (1923-2018) featuring the great Dutch violinist as concerto soloist, chamber musician and concert master and issued to mark the centenary of his birth. An original jackets collection of a much-loved musician, with an introduction by Bernard Haitink, written shortly before his death. For many years, the concerto recordings made by Herman Krebbers were staples of the Philips LP catalogue. The critical praise and popularity awarded to them was all the more remarkable in view of the fact that Krebbers never pursued the path of an international soloist. Instead, he put his family first and chose the vocation of as an orchestral concertmaster, firstly with the Hague Philharmonic under Willem van Otterloo. With them he made his first recordings in the early 1950s, of Bach and Beethoven and Vieuxtemps. Around this time, Philips also recorded Krebbers in duo-violin repertoire with his fellow student and lifelong friend Theo Olof. The albums of Bartók Duos and the Double Concertos by Bach and Henk Badings are among several recordings in the collection receiving their first international appearance on CD in this collection, which also includes recordings of the Bruch and Dvorák concertos made in 1973, on the occasion of Krebbers's 40th anniversary as a soloist. In 1962 Krebbers became leader of the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink, and went on to make celebrated second recordings of the Beethoven and Brahms concertos, as well as the taxing peaks of the 'concertmaster' repertoire, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben. The box also includes the Benedictus from Beethoven's Missa solemnis, with it's long and sublime solo-violin part, in two Concertgebouw recordings made in the 70s with Eugen Jochum and Leonard Bernstein, as well as 'Erbarme dich' from Bac

At a time when there were limited opportunities to attend the opera house, and before the existence of recordings, the operatic fantasy proved a popular and ingenious way to spend great melodies to a wider audience. Some classics of this genre are heard in this second volume - not least Wilhelmj's arrangement of Handel and Kreisler's beautifully tranquil arrangement of Gluck - but there are also memorable examples from Verdi and Hubay's piquant opera Le Luthier de Cremone, as well as two vivid contemporary examples that continue the genre into the twenty-first century.