In Evening Light: Vasks, Schubert

In Evening Light: Vasks, Schubert

In Evening Light: Vasks, Schubert

In Evening Light: Vasks, Schubert

CD

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Overview

Peteris Vasks' Violin Concerto ("Distant Light") was commissioned by Gidon Kremer in the mid-'90s and remains one of his most popular works. Perhaps it is surprising that it has taken the composer nearly 30 years to follow it up with a second, but it has been worth the wait. The Violin Concerto No. 2 ("Evening Light"), which here receives its world premiere from violinist Sebastian Bohren, holds a consistent mood throughout, with all three movements marked Andante in one way or another and a strong dose of Vasks' characteristic lush sound, halfway between the minimalism of Arvo Pärt and Vasks' other Baltic contemporaries and the richer textures of Witold Lutos¿awski. There are few of the excursions into folk rhythms or cadenza-like passages present in the earlier concerto. With Bohren's opulent sound, the work is sure to please fans of this most Romantic of the minimalists, but also innovative is the inclusion of Schubert's Rondo Brillant for violin and piano in B minor, D. 895, here played in an arrangement for violin and strings by Paul Suits. Bohren may have thought of this as a contrast to the Vasks concerto and the Meditation that brings the curtain down, but actually, as interpreted by Bohren and conductor Sergej Bolkhovets with the Münchener Kammerorchester, the little work, with its Schubertian blocks of harmony, reveals an unexpected kinship with Vasks. The feeling is intensified by the sound from the Himmelfahrtskirche in Munich as rendered by producer Andreas Neubronner, which turns both Vasks and Schubert into "holy minimalism" in spite of the fact that neither is a sacred work. One can find this an interesting idea even without buying into it fully, and it is just one attraction on an album that has several of them. ~ James Manheim

Product Details

Release Date: 04/26/2024
Label: AVIE
UPC: 0822252266221

Tracks

  1. Concerto No. 2 'Vakara gaism¿' (In Evening Light) for violin & string orchestra~I. Andante con passione
  2. Concerto No. 2 'Vakara gaism¿' (In Evening Light) for violin & string orchestra~II. Andante cantabile
  3. Concerto No. 2 'Vakara gaism¿' (In Evening Light) for violin & string orchestra~III. Andante con amore
  4. Rondeau brillant in B minor Op. 70 D.895
  5. Vientu¿ais e¿¿elis (Lonely Angel): Meditation for violin & string orchestra

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