Stravinsky: Duo concertant

2CDs for price of 1.

Stravinsky’s collaboration with the violinist Samuel Dushkin was a great artistic success, generating new works for the repertoire as well as arrangements of some of the composer’s most tuneful and popular works. Of these arrangements, Dushkin wrote that Stravinsky seemed ‘to go back to the essence of the music and rewrite or recreate the music in the spirit of the new instrument’. Reviewing the current performers in The Independent, Bayan Northcott writes that ‘these are no ordinary transcriptions. In reducing items from The Firebird or The Fairy’s Kiss to the violin and piano medium, Stravinsky rethought and respaced their every chord’.

In the performing partnership of Anthony Marwood and Thomas Adès, Hyperion has a combination that seems to reignite the original flames of inspiration, creation and re-creation.

Stravinsky’s music for violin and piano was written for his duo with violinist Samuel Dushkin. Both the Suite italienne and Divertimento are arrangements of ballet scores, each work in turn an alchemic transformation of Baroque and Romantic styles into Stravinsky’s distinctive idiom. The enigmatic but unwaveringly expressive Duo Concertant was Stravinsky’s only original work in this form. Huebl and Wait were acclaimed for their recording of Schnittke’s complete Sonatas (8570978). Mark Wait received two GRAMMY® nominations for his disc of Elliott Carter’s Piano Concerto (8559151).

Roman Totenberg is world renown for his unique artistry and repertoire covering the entire spectrum of violin literature. A master performer and teacher, he continues to impart his wisdom to younger musicians beyond his 100th birthday. This remarkable release marks a special moment in the violin world.

The title is something of a charming misnomer: only a few minutes of Igor Stravinsky’s all-encompassing output were originally scored for violin and piano. However, once he had made the acquaintance of the violinist Samuel Dushkin, his interest in this most Classical of chamber genres was piqued, and the two men worked closely to transform some of his most popular, melodic and balletic music into suites and miniatures that are no mere transcriptions but stand, witty and proud, in their own right.

Dushkin was suggested to Stravinsky as a possible performer for the premiere of his Violin Concerto. Stravinsky acceded, and found Dushkin to have ‘a musical culture, a delicate understanding, and – in the exercise of his profession – an abnegation that is very rare’ – qualities also to be appreciated in the deft approach of the Dutch violinist Isabelle van Keulen, complemented by the famously quirky originality of her partner here, the Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen.

The acclaimed Naxos Robert Craft Stravinsky Edition continues with this fascinating album of diverse pieces by one of the 20th Century’s iconic composers. The Duo Concertant reconciles the contrasting timbres of violin and piano, while the breezy Sonata for Two Pianos, written in America, draws on Russian themes. The Requiem Canticles was performed at Stravinsky’s funeral, while the ‘sacred ballad’ Abraham and Isaac is a dramatic and moving retelling of the Old Testament story. The Élégie for solo viola is one of his most affecting works, and Bluebird is a loving arrangement for chamber orchestra of excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty.

Rising star of the violin Ray Chen, winner of the Queen Elizabeth International Music Competition, makes his recording debut with Melba, accompanied by another fast-emerging Australian talent, pianist Timothy Young. Diversions is a disc of scintillating chamber music that presents Igor Stravinsky at his most entertaining, his spirit brimming with optimism and bravura.

The pieces – Suite after themes, fragments and pieces by Giambattista Pergolesi, Duo concertante, Divertimento, ‘Russian Maiden’s Song’ from the opera Mavra and the ‘Danse russe’ from Petrushka – are perfect vehicles to showcase Chen’s violinistic bel canto, his luminous tone and his off-the-scale technique, all to be expected given his competition pedigree. But Stravinsky’s music also provides Chen with the perfect vehicle to demonstrate his genius for vivid musical story-telling. This recording marks Chen as an exciting musical personality as well as a remarkable virtuoso.

Ray Chen was born in Taiwan in 1989 and raised in Brisbane, Australia where he began playing violin within the Suzuki school. He was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music at the age of 15, where he continues to work on expanding his repertoire with Aaron Rosand (himself a student of the great Efrem Zimbalist who was in turn a student of Leopold Auer.) Chen is the winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium (2009) and the Yehudi Menuhin Competition in Cardiff (2008). He has recently signed an exclusive recording contract with Sony.