Berg & Britten : Violin Concertos

Album review

There's no question that everybody should have a copy of Berg's Violin Concerto. The most beautiful violin, the most moving, the most profound, and the most transcendent violin concerto of the twentieth century, Berg's violin concerto To the Memory of an Angel belongs in every civilized home. But which recording should be the one?
The argument could be made that this 2003 recording by violinist Daniel Hope with Paul Watkins conducting the BBC Symphony should be the one. Hope and Watkins' is the first recording of the new critical edition and the notes on the page are now closer to those that Berg, rather than his posthumous copy editors, intended. And while that doesn't make a whole lot of difference most of the time, when it makes a difference as the opening of the Part II, it does make a big difference.
Daniel Hope is a bit of a madman, playing with so much expressivity, so much intensity, so much rapture that at times the music gives way beneath him. But Watkins' and the BBC stay with him all the way from inferno to paradise and their performance together is wholly unified in conception and execution. Warner's sound is warm and immediate.

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