Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz

Soo-Hyun Park was unanimously awarded the Prix Groupe Edmond de Rothschild in January 2012, at the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad. The prize offers the winner the opportunity to record their debut recording with an orchestra. Born in Seoul in 1989, Soo- Hyun Park began playing the violin at the age of seven. Since 1999 she has attended the masterclasses of Dora Schwarzberg at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna, where she also enjoys teaching. Her highly virtuosic programme includes Wieniawski’s passionate first concerto and a work once championed by Jascha Heifetz, the concerto by Julius Conus. Conus studied under Arensky and Taneyev and was a close friend of Rachmaninov from student days and through both composers’ time in the USA. Conus’s son married Rachmaninov’s daughter. His one major work is this highly effective and well-constructed showpiece for the violin. Vieuxtemps’ 'Fantasia appassionata' is a miniature concerto, with a passionate central movement and a fiendishly challenging ‘salterella’ finale. The composer was famous for his technical dexterity, and this work gives some idea of how phenomenal his technique must have been.

Soo-Hyun has performed in Europe as well as China and Korea. She has performed at the Mozartsaal of the Vienna Konzerthaus and in Tianjin with the city’s symphony orchestra in a concert broadcast live on both radio and television.

In 2011 Pacini won the Prix Marguerite Dütschler of the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad. Born in Munich in 1991, her father an Italian professor of literature and her mother a German physician, Sophie Pacini began to play the piano comparatively late, at the age of six. However, her outstanding talent was recognised quickly: she made her debut with Haydn’s D major Piano Concerto in 2000. In 2002, aged 11, she became a student of Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. In 2004 she was admitted to the Mozarteum’s institute for highly talented musicians, where she studied not only the piano but also improvisation, aural theory, harmonics, composition and conducting. Since 2007 she has been studying in Pavel Gililov’s master class.

In 2010 Pacini auditioned for Martha Argerich and, after the Liszt Sonata, Argerich approached her, kissed her on the cheek and said: ‘You are very good. Do you know that?’ Since then their friendship has grown. Argerich recommended Sophie to Fou T’song and invited her to take part in the Progetto Martha Argerich in Lugano. They arrange to meet whenever possible. Martha Argerich and Sophie Pacini worked together on the preparation for this, her debut recording of an Argerich favourite – the Schumann concerto, and also on Mozart’s first great piano concerto, known as ‘Jeunehomme’. Named after a French keyboard player who was in Salzburg over the winter of 1776–7, nothing is known of her today, except that the 21-year-old Mozart wrote this remarkable concerto for her.

This month CPO begins a series dedicated to the Croatian composer Dora Pejačević. This release features her principal symphonic works: the Symphony in F sharp minor and the Phantasie concertante for Piano and Orchestra. Composed during 1917-19, they not only represent milestones in Croatian music history but also in every way hold their own with Rachmaninov’s works (who is perhaps her closest stylistic relative).

CPO’s Röntgen edition expands this month with a releases of his only two Violin Concertos, performed by Liza Ferschtman, a Dutch violinist much in demand around Europe.

Nightingale Classics is pleased to present a new compilation of Bellini Portraits interpreted by Edita Gruberova the worlds leading soprano of Belcanto repertoire.

Bellini’s individually melancholic and ethereal phrases have always been a favourite of Edita Gruberova, and here she selects repertoire from six of his operas.

CPO’s series featuring major Swedish composers of the first half of the twentieth century now makes its way to Natanael Berg, a composer known for his lushly sweeping orchestral style.

All Berg’s five symphonies have programmatic titles. The Second is entitled ‘The Seasons’; and the First was inspired by the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

French-German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt makes his debut for Claves. A previous recording made in 2007 was awarded ‘Selection of the Month’ in THE STRAD with a glowing endorsement of his talent – “Nicolas Altstaedt is already much more than promising”. This new recording covers two virtuoso works from the 19th Century, Schumann and Tchaikovsky and Gulda’s fascinating concerto for cello and wind band.

Hermann Bischoff, a pupil of Richard Strauss, was a highly gifted composer and always reaped high praise from music critics and the press, but his compositional output remained relatively small. A mere two symphonies, two shorter orchestral pieces, one and a half operas, and a handful of songs were produced during his lifetime. This disc is the second in a two volume series and presents the recording premieres of Symphony No. 2 and Introduktion & Rondo.

After the performance premiere one critic wrote, “After the first symphony, which was composed in great dependence on R. Strauss, this new D minor symphony almost has the effect of an idyll. Music from the spirit of the absolutely musical.”