Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 2; Scottish Fantasy; Adagio appassionato

Baeumer, Hermann, Weithaas, Antje

CPO 777 833-2

Max Bruch is perhaps the most famous one-work composer. He enjoys worldwide renown as the author of his first Violin Concerto, his Scottish Fantasy continues to be performed, but everything else by him has more or less been forgotten. His oeuvre nevertheless includes many a work worth discovering, and this is why cpo espoused the cause of his music some years ago. We are now announcing a very special highlight: we have obtained the services of the outstanding violinist Antje Weithaas for the release of a new edition of Bruch's complete oeuvre for violin and orchestra with the NDR Radio Philharmonic. Bruch's friendship with Joseph Joachim and later with Sarasate so greatly inspired him that this work group ended up accounting for what is by far the largest part of his symphonic oeuvre: three concertos (no, actually four, if we count the four-movement Serenade), the Fantasy, a Konzertstück, and various single-movement works forming a little violin Concerto cosmos all of their own. And when such a gifted artist wakes these sleeping beauties with a kiss, then the result has to be termed a stroke of luck as in a fairy tale. The completely underestimated Violin Concerto No. 2 occupying center stage on our Vol. 1 displays a formal structure and compelling thematic logic truly qualifying it as one of the high points in the Concerto literature of the nineteenth century. An absolute listening must!

CD

28.05.2014

761203783328

American Record Guide: 'Critic’s Choice' (2015)