Sarasate: Carmen Fantasy, Op. 25

At just 11 years of age, Sarah Chang was, quite simply, an undisputed violinistic phenomenon. She appeared with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic at the age of eight, playing Paganini's First Violin Concerto, and recorded this debut recital disc a year later. The Debut was her first of many future Classical Billboard best-selling albums. Gramophone Magazine proclaimed, “This is an astonishing disc. Sarah Chang’s playing will enthrall and captivate in equal measure.”

Dazzlingly virtuosic fireworks, spirited passion and astonishing technique combine in the youthful Chinese violinist Tianwa Yang who leaves the critics grasping for superlatives whenever she plays.

In this second volume of Naxos’s cycle of Sarasate’s complete works for violin and orchestra she again teams with the orchestra founded by the legendary Spanish violinist-composer in 1879 to present two of his orchestral masterpieces, the famous Carmen Fantasy and the sadly neglected Romeo and Juliet Fantasy, as well as several other utterly delightful, and fiendishly difficult, concert pieces.

Ruggiero Ricci is in his element in these virtuoso concertos and showpieces, with both, the Tchaikovsky Concerto (with Sargent) and Scherzo and the Sibelius Violin Concerto being released internationally on CD for the first time. The perceptive booklet notes by Tully Potter include a biography of Ricci and (sometimes wry!) comments by the violinist himself on the recordings, and some fascinating detail on the first movement cadenza of the Khachaturian. All the recordings were made in a five-year period from 1956 (Khachaturian) to 1961 (Tchaikovsky).

Michaela Paetsch Neftel and Wieslaw Pipczynski perform favourites from the virtuosic violin repertoire including Vitali's Chaconne, Paganini's Campanella, Kreisler's Liebeslied and Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy. All are excellently suited to an accordion accompaniment.