Anthony Marwood; Anthony Marwood: Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Release Date: 01 October 2005
Label: Hyperion Records Ltd
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 034571174969
Genres: Classical Orchestral
Description
Kurt Weill (1900–1950) began his career in the early 1920s after a musical childhood and several years of study in Berlin with the composer-pianist Ferruccio Busoni. By 1926 he was an established young German-Jewish composer but he had already decided to devote himself to the musical theatre (he married the actress Lotte Lenya in 1926) and his works with Bertolt Brecht soon made him famous all over Europe. He fled the new Nazi leadership in March 1933 and lived in America for his remaining years.
Weill composed his violin concerto in 1924; its orchestration and harmonies suggest the Second Viennese School and sit somewhere between Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Weill injects humorous and morose themes often mixing the two together as if they were indistinguishable. He uses the soloist-versus-orchestra format, the violin often competing against angular rhythms in the orchestra with an agitated lyrical line; there is also noticable jazz influence.
The violin concerto by Latvian-born Peteris Vasks (b1946) could not be further removed from Weill’s astringent work. As with many composers who emerged from eastern Europe in the 1980s—such as Arvo Part and Henryk Gorecki—Vasks’ music has a very strong spiritual theme, in particular the tension between contrasting worlds—good and evil. His concerto for violin is fragile, beautiful and otherworldly, with just a small section of chaos depicting the fight of evil which is soon stamped out.
Anthony Marwood’s silvery tone and immaculate intonation is again on display in this fascinating disc.
Tracklisting
Mishka Rushdie Momen
The Gesualdo Six / Owain Park
Takacs Quartet
Simon Callaghan, Sinfonieorchester St Gallen
Cinquecento
Andrey Gugnin
El Leon de Oro / Peter Phillips
Piers Lane
Anna Gourari, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana & Markus Poschner
Vladimir Delman; Milan RAI Symphony Orchestra
Thomas Schippers; Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della Rai; New York Philharmonic Orchestra; Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
Liepaja Symphony Orchestra
Johanna Domotor; Meesun Hong Coleman; Stuttgarter Kammerorchester
Josef Krips; Various Orchestras
Josef Krips
Atalanta Fugiens Orchestra; Vanni Moretto
