Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63

Arguably Prokofiev’s best symphonic work, the 6th symphony receives an electric and idiosyncratic rendering by Mravinsky and his Russian forces. Heifetz’s interpretation of the second violin concerto has long been considered a classic. Super budget price.

The forces of the Russian National Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko need no introduction, but add to this the huge talent of violinist Arabella Steinbacher, this recording is one to listen out for. Arabella has already established herself as a performer on the international stage, and is appearing at the Royal Festival Hall later this season. Here she performs both of Prokofiev’s Violin Concertos, and couples it with the Sonata for Violin Solo in D Major Op. 115. Her previous releases for PentaTone have received fantastic praise and have all been Gramophone Editor’s Choices.

Janine Jansen has been a top-selling artist since her debut recording in 2004 for Decca sold 300,000 records. A major star in Europe, especially the Netherlands, Jansen has frequently topped the classical charts and featured in the pop charts.

For this release, Jansen is accompanied in the concerto by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under its Russian-born Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski. When she played the work with the LPO in London as part of its 2012 “Prokofiev: Man of the People?” festival, The Times hailed her as “a violinist who is right now on matchless form … a player that you follow wherever she leads”

Composed in the mid1930s, on the eve of his return to the USSR, Prokofiev’s much-loved Violin Concerto No.2 boasts the same accessible tunefulness and emotional directness as his enduringly popular ballet Romeo and Juliet, whose love music is ravishingly recalled in the soaring, songlike lyricism of the concerto’s slow central movement. For contrast the concerto is coupled with two chamber works conceived in the same decade: the stark yet expressive Sonata for Two Violins (1932) and the darkly tragic Violin Sonata No.1 (1938–46), which constitutes the composer’s covert memorial to those many friends and colleagues lost during Stalin’s Great Terror and the subsequent World War.

A Czech conductor who excelled worldwide. Martin Turnovsky recordings for the first time on CD.

Paradoxically, a greater opportunity to witness the artistry of the remarkable Czech conductor Martin Turnovsky, whose teachers included Karel Ančerl and George Szell, has been afforded to audiences abroad.

After winning the international conducting competition in Besancon (1958), he had to wait almost a decade for the real launch of his international career, since the totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia prevented him from travelling around the world.

He was chief conductor of the Dresdner Staatskapelle and Staatsoper, and, after emigrating to the West at the end of the 1960s, led the Operas in Oslo and Bonn, guest-conducted the New York Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and other major orchestras. Only after the regime change in Czechoslovakia in 1989 could he renew his work with orchestras on home soil. In the 1960s he made numerous recordings for Supraphon. The majority of those presented on these discs are now available on CD for the first time. They bear witness to Turnovsky’s distinct talent, which several years later would dazzle to the full in front of the world’s most renowned orchestras.