Dinicu: Hora Staccato

Heifetz’s series of arrangements and transcriptions for violin and piano reveal just how tasteful and refined a musician he was. Crafted with precision, and played with passion, they are alive with his stylistic awareness. Whether in his Rachmaninov transcriptions or in Robert Russell Bennett’s A Song Sonata, Heifetz lavished equal care on these gems and they enriched his concert programmes. They also proved hugely popular on disc – thirteen pieces come from a 1960 LP famously called ‘Heifetz’ – and their variety, virtuosity and sheer beauty remain imperishable examples of the art of the violin.

Mark Obert-Thorn, reissue producer and audio restoration engineer

Jascha Heifetz has been described as the ‘greatest twentieth-century exponent of his instrument’ (Gramophone). Critics admired his technical agility and the myriad nuances of his playing, qualities that made him one of the most iconic violinists of his era. This set includes a selection of concertos and sonatas that showcase Heifetz’s versatility and his extraordinary ability to capture the particular character of each piece in his repertoire.

The present CD pays homage to the Italian great violinist Renato De Barbieri (Genova, 1920 – Trento, 1991), whose artistic life has regrettably been forgotten in these days. The careful digital remastering from the original LPs reveals the wholeness of his talent as virtuoso and performer. His gift is here enjoyable not only for works as Paganini’s Le Streghe and Ravel’s Tzigane but mainly also for twentieth century’s masterpiece Sonata n.1 per violino e pianoforte of Sergey Prokofiev.

The exciting young Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaya, who earlier this year won a BBC Music Magazine Award for her recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, is here joined by a small group of musicians including her mother, also a violinist, and father, a renowned cimbalom player, in a selection of pieces that reflect Eastern European folk and Gypsy traditions. Amongst the composers represented are Enescu, Ligeti, Kurtág, and Ravel.

One of the few pieces to feature the cimbalom as a main instrument in the standard classical repertoire is György Kurtág’s 8 Duos for Violin and Cimbalom. Kurtág comes from a part of Hungary close to Romania, and his music in these short pieces is steeped in the folk tradition both countries. The Romanian composer George Enescu’s music is celebrated for its Gypsy rhythms and these elements come to the fore in his Third Violin Sonata.

Patricia Kopatchinskaya was born in Moldova and raised in a family of musicians. "Rapsodia" was the name of the former band of her father Victor Kopatchinsky, one of the most famous cimbalom players of his generation. Her parents were constantly travelling with their ensemble, playing 300 concerts every year - in the Kremlin for the government and the generals, in factories and prisons, and in Siberia, North Africa, and Latin America. With her father on the cimbalom, her mother playing a second violin and friends such as Mihaela Ursuleasa, she here performs works rooted in traditional Moldovan and Eastern European music alongside pieces such as Ravel’s Tzigane that have a Gypsy inspiration.