Kreisler: La Gitana

22 miniatures for violin & piano, including Praeludium and Allegro, Liebesteid, Liebesfreud, Schon Rosmarin, Caprice Viennois, Tambourin Chinois, Rondino on a theme by Beethoven, Ave Maria (Schubert), Arioso (Bach).

This delightful release brings together many of Fritz Kreisler’s short pieces for violin and piano. The programme is drawn from original compositions, arrangements and stylistic parodies making up a CD of generally lesser known works. As well as enriching the repertoire Kreisler issues a challenge to violinists to play these pieces as effectively and as affectingly as he did.

Although she has already performed with several leading orchestras, violinist Caroline Goulding is still only sixteen. Her debut recording, in which she is accompanied by pianist Chris O’Riley, features an intriguing selection of works with an American flavour by, amongst others, Kreisler, Gershwin, and Corigliano. At the age of sixteen, violinist Caroline Goulding has already graced the stage with prestigious orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony. She won the coveted first prize of the Aspen Music Festival’s Concerto Competition when only thirteen. On this, her first recording for Telarc, she joins forces with pianist Christopher O’Riley to perform several works with a strong american link. One of the main highlights of the CD is a gripping account of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer John Corigliano’s Red Violin Caprices, crafted from his score to the 1998 film. Other pieces featured on the disc include “Souvenir d’Amerique”, a dazzling fantasy on the popular song “Yankee Doodle” by Belgian violinist Henri Vieuxtemps, four of Fritz Kreisler’s delightful miniatures, American composer Paul Schoenfield’s Four Souvenirs, and Jascha Heifetz’s transcriptions of selections from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Following on from his Tchaikovsky and Glazunov violin concertos disc, Vadim Gluzman now presents a disc of virtuoso violin music by a range of different composers with a sparkling programme fit for any of those virtuosos of days gone by. Indeed, several of them appear in the list of contents in the unaccustomed roles of composer or arranger: Heifetz himself has arranged Fairy Tale, by Medtner, while Szeryng’s version of Halffter’s Habanera receives its world première recording with this release. Other examples of virtuoso-turned-composer are Wieniawski, Francescatti (with a Polka) and Kreisler, whose La Gitana fits into the tradition of virtuoso pieces inspired by gypsy music – a tradition of which Ravel’s Tzigane is of course the jewel.

Here Gluzman performs with Angela Yoffe, his regular duo partner as well as his wife. This well-matched pair has been admired by the reviewers for their intense, passionate and powerful performances as well as for their supreme command of their respective instruments. On their first disc on BIS the reviewer on website Classics Today wrote: ‘Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe push their collective virtuosity sky-high’.