Quando ancora l'attività compositiva solitamente portava con sé precisi caratteri stilistici tipici della cultura cittadina in cui i compositori - quanto meno - operavano, l'eccellente violinista Giuseppe Matteo Alberti (1685-1751) guardò oltre la siepe e oggi gli è riconosciuto il merito di avere per primo adottato alcuni stilemi del linguaggio vivaldiano al di fuori dell'ambiente veneziano. I dati anagrafici di Alberti sono sovrapponibili, come si vede, a quelli di J.S. Bach, ma a lui non arrise la grandezza creativa e la fortuna (tarda) del Cantor: Bologna, S. Petronio, l'Accademia Filarmonica della sua città - di cui per qualche anno fu "Principe" - le sale del conte Orazio Bargellini per il quale curò l'attività musicale, furono lo scenario che egli calcò da protagonista,

Berwald's is one of those names that lie on the fringes of our musical universe rather than in the centre: apart from the four symphonies, little of his music is much heard. I can't remember seeing either of the concertos in a public concert and his best-known orchestral piece, the Overture to Estrella de Soria, not included here, has also fallen from view in recent years. He is an unfailingly intelligent and original figure and his neglect is our loss.

In her interpretation of Telemann’s Fantasias, Małgorzata Malke takes her listeners on a journey to 18th-century Poland, a land which Telemann often visited, drawing inspiration from Polish folk music. “In my interpretation of the 12 Fantasias, I decided to follow the path of Polish influences in Telemann’s compositions, looking for traces of the composer’s love for Polish music,” says Małgorzata Malke.

James Conlon’s suite from Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk collects various scenes, arias, and orchestral interludes into a musical narrative of the opera’s tragic story. Although the first number is entitled “In the court of the Ismailovs”, the suite actually begins with Katerina’s pre-suicide meditation from the final scene before abruptly moving to the rollicking music of Scene 2’s introduction. Two love duets, “Katerina and Sergei” I & II, frame the great orchestral Passacaglia (from Act 2), followed by the comedic “The Drunkard”, which sets up the “Arrival of the Police”. The suite concludes with “In exile”, which contains the opera’s close.

The superb sound quality perfectly complements and supports Martzy's playing, which is thoroughly in the deep-and-involving end rather than the daring-and-scintillating end. There is not a sprung rhythm to be found. This is not Bach with a light touch. Vibrato is plentiful and beautiful. Movements end with "OK, I'm ending now!" ritardandos, which, however, are so well judged as to feel inevitable. Tone is gorgeous, technique assured to the point of transparency. The rhythms are 100% 1st-half-of-20th-century, and in that context are expressive and live.

It seems, and was, ages ago that I last reviewed a disc of Estonian Heino Eller's orchestral music. That disc from Bella Musica-Antes is still worth hunting down as it overlaps with this Ondine example only in relation to the single-movement 24-minute violin concerto. The Ondine recording is unflinchingly forward and vivid. Eller's Violin Concerto has about it much the same rhapsodic air as the concertos by Delius and Moeran and RVW's Lark.

As a child, Antoine Tamestit studied the violin, but at age 10, he fell in love with the six unaccompanied Cello Suites of J.S. Bach and immediately wanted to switch to the cello. His teacher advised him that playing that instrument would involve learning a completely new technique, so he was allowed to switch instead to the viola. Thus, Tamestit was able to play the suites as arranged for his present instrument, and because the viola has the tuning of C-G-D-A, Bach's originals have been transposed up an octave.

Bach’s remarkable Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin are revered for their boundless inventiveness, technical ingenuity and emotional depth. With their brilliant preludes, stately dances and complex four-part fugues, the demands on the performer are enormous – from rapid scale passages, double stopping and arpeggios, to the skill and concentration required to create the illusion of separately moving and interweaving voices.

This is quite simply magnificent violin-playing, the sort that while you’re listening to it convinces you that the music couldn’t possibly be played any other way. You soon realize just how far she’s come since her teenage years, the tempo marginally more mobile and the variety of nuance and tone on offer so much wider than it had been.

Hearing guitarist Sean Shibe’s Bach recital, recorded in Delphian’s fifteenth-century Scottish venue, Baroque violinist Bojan Čičić was inspired during the first lockdown to begin recording Bach’s iconic Partitas and Sonatas. Amid the gloom of the pandemic and restrictions on performances, Čičić travelled north – when allowed – to explore the intense rigours of Bach’s fugues and shining virtuosity of the Partitas’ fast movements.

Through this exciting recording, the violinist Fabio Biondi pursues his exploration of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century repertoire for solo violin. Two years after his complete recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's solo Sonatas and Partitas (V 5467), he lands on entirely unknown territory, the Assaggi by the Swedish composer Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758). Rarely lasting more than twelve minutes, the Assaggi is thus a fascinating melting-pot of multiple aesthetics in vogue in Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

A quick glance at the heading tells the knowledgeable reader that most of what we have here are well-known lollipops. They exist in literally hundreds of recordings. Everybody will have his/her favourite pieces played by one or several of the violin greats through the last eight decades. The reissue of this twenty-year-old recital at budget price poses the question: is it worth adding yet another collection? The answer should be an unequivocal “Yes!”, since Chung is one of the stars of fairly recent times. Even before putting the disc in the CD player one knows that these will be technically impeccable readings, played with great musicality, refinement and commitment – elegant but never bland.

Although Nathan Milstein hailed from Odessa, the cradle of Russian violin playing, his personal style was more classical and intellectual in approach than many of his colleagues. By the middle of the twentieth century he had become one of the most renowned violinists in the world, and he did as much as anyone else to imbue Bach's solo violin partitas and sonatas with the rather mystical aura they have presently. Milstein began to study violin at the age of seven. His first teacher was Pyotr Stolyarsky, who remained with him through 1914. Milstein's last recital as a Stolyarsky pupil included another promising student, the five-year-old David Oistrakh. Milstein then went to the St. Petersburg Conservatory to study with Leopold Auer.

Kyung Wha Chung's career was launched with a series of LPs made for Decca in the early 1970s, revealing an artist of exceptional technique, insight and spontaneity. One of these contained this rich-sounding performance of the Bruch G minor Violin Concerto, recorded with Rudolf Kempe and the Royal Philharmonic in 1972. It is still one of the freshest and most vital readings of this piece around, as Chung seems to know exactly where to draw the line between precision and abandon, the playing always seeming felt rather than planned, perhaps the highest achievement for a virtuoso. The 1981 recording of the Mendelssohn is a sheer delight, with fast tempos giving the work an extra sparkle, something the soloist obviously relishes.

Violinist Kyung-Wha Chung's highly intense compelling performances especially in the Prokofiev Concerti here have made them favorites in Decca's catalogue for years. Rather than purely dwell on the technical rigor these works demand (as many violinists often do), Chung instead focuses more on Prokofiev's lyricism in an effort to draw out the full and varied range of emotional qualities in the score. Conductor Andre Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra couldn't be more understanding and supportive collaborators and Decca's sound, while spotlighting Chung slightly, is quite good.