Mendelssohn & Britten: Violin Concertos

Album review

A student of Zakhar Bron and Robert Zimansky, the young Swiss violinist has seen a rapid rise, taking on roles as different as international soloist and quartettist in the Stradivari Quartet, in which he is second violin. Based in Zurich, he keeps in touch with his native canton of Aargau where he is leading his own series of concerts. After several well-regarded recordings, such as that of Beethoven's Concerto in D Major in an intimate style with the Helvetian ensemble CHAARTS (= CHAmber ARTistS) who play without a conductor, we find him here, still with the RCA, getting into the concertos of Mendelssohn and Britten, with Andrew Litton at the head of Liverpool's Royal Orchestra.
Brandishing a magnificent 1776 Guadagini, borrowed from a Swiss patron, Sebastian Bohren flashes a mischievous smile on the album cover, as if to tell us of his joy at joining the hall of fame and producing this extraordinary album. The very famous Concerto in E Minor by Mendelssohn, which the composer would conduct in London in front of Queen Victoria, passed the baton onto the concerto written by the young Britten in 1938 between England and America. While it took time to establish itself, Britten's Concerto Op. 15 slowly made its way into the repertoire of contemporary violinists who have managed to overcome its technical difficulties while perfectly grasping that the point of the piece isn't to shine on stage but to reach into the deepest corners of the mind. © François Hudry/Qobuz