Beethoven & Brahms: Violin Concertos

These live performances capture Ginette Neveu’s sublime artistry and unmistakable sound at white heat, shortly before her tragic early death in a plane crash aged just 30. — BBC Music Magazine, January 2018, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 14th Oct 2016
Catalogue No: SWR19018CD
Label: SWR Music
Length: 84 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77

Work length40:14

Ginette Neveu (violin)
Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française
Roger Désormière
Recorded: 25 April 1948
Recording Venue: Baden-Baden, Kurhaus, Germany

I. Allegro non troppo

Track length22:24

II. Adagio

Track length9:32

III. Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace

Track length8:18

Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61

Work length44:12

Ginette Neveu (violin)
SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg
Hans Rosbaud
Recorded: 25 September 1949
Recording Venue: Baden-Baden, Kurhaus, Germany

I. Allegro ma non troppo

Track length23:55

II. Larghetto

Track length9:51

III. Rondo: Allegro

Track length10:26

About
Reviews
Explore

About

In the light of her untimely death, Ginette Neveu’s artistic achievements are legendary; she is remembered both for her outstanding personality and her prodigious talent. She was the world’s first great female violinist, adored everywhere and critically acclaimed for her virile playing that combined irresistible force, passion, intensity, lyricism, sonority and precision.

After her sensational triumph at the Henryk Wieniawski Competition in Warsaw in 1935, her fame spread quickly across Europe, followed by subsequent appearances and accompanying accolades in the Soviet Union, the USA, Canada, Latin America and Australia.

On 20 October 1949 she performed at a farewell concert in Paris, shortly before the start of her tour in the USA. Eight days later, the plane she was flying on with her brother and 46 other people crashed into a mountain on São Miguel Island in the Azores, after two failed attempted landings.

The live recording of the Brahms Concerto in Baden-Baden on 25 April 1948 is pure “French Brahms”, but subsumed into Ginette Neveu’s style of combining powerfully fertile ideas with a dreamy spirituality.

The Beethoven Concerto was recorded in Baden-Baden on 25 September 1949 with the Symphony Orchestra of the Southwest German Radio (SWR) under the direction of Hans Rosbaud, just a month before Neveu's untimely death. Few violinists have succeeded in equalling her pure, unsentimental but touchingly unique interpretation of the work.

Reviews

January 2018

These live performances capture Ginette Neveu’s sublime artistry and unmistakable sound at white heat, shortly before her tragic early death in a plane crash aged just 30.

2nd December 2016

A spellbinding association between a great violinist and her two perceptive conducting colleagues.

13th November 2016

It’s not only Neveu’s death at the age of 30, in a plane crash, that has given her a magical aura: it’s her matchless playing, the intensity, the purity, the rhythmic vitality, the sheer genius of it. She remains unique.

December 2016

The matchless French violinist, dead at 30, lives again in these 1949 recordings.

Beethoven & Brahms: Violin Concertos

2 CDs

Contents

Download queue