Generosity is a term I associate very much with love, and a quality that great music can have. Both these compositions are giving in an overwhelmingly warm manner.

It is this similarity, and the fact that they both have the rare ability of uniting the highest compositional qualities – intricate use of thematic material, structure and virtuosic instrumentation – with a whiff of popular culture through seductive use melody and rhythm, together with a great sense of humour (and in the case of Bernstein outright swing!) that I felt they would make a wonderful match on this album.

It is not uncommon to hear classical music “experts” speak of both Korngold and Bernstein with slight disdain when referring to their so-called “classical” compositions. The suggestion has been made that as they wrote for the silver screen and hence in a slightly popular fashion, it makes them lesser classical composers. All I can say to those critics is; you do not know these works!

Being a “serious” musician myself there is no question for me that these compositions are of the highest rank, despite, or maybe precisely because they can go straight to people’s hearts!

– Liza Ferschtman

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My relationship with this concerto started when I was 14 years old, at first with only the last movement until when I was 15 I finally got to play it fully. It was such a thrill, the first “adult” concerto I played; I still remember that excitement vividly. Over the course of the years I got to perform it many times and it always was a pleasure. At the same time, though, some things always loomed those many lessons I had, all the interpretations that came before me, and most especially the fact that for all its simplicity it is a very difficult concerto!”

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From 1717 to 1723, he composed violin concertos, The Well-Tempered Clavier, pieces for solo organ, harpsichord and cello, and sonatas and partitas for the violin. Most of his younger contemporaries, including his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, considered his music old-fashioned. In doing so, they appar- ently neglected The Well-Tempered Clavier, in which Bach experimented with keys, new sonorities and daring modulations from one key to another.

The new tuning system for keyboard instruments, called “equal temperament,” in which all semitones are equidistant, opened previously unheard of possibilities for Bach. The innovations it gave rise to, found their way even into his works for solo string instrument. Many of the arpeggios and various double stops in those pieces employed such sonorities, from which Bach could deviate into an array of keys. This would not have been possible before the new tuning system.

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They indeed met shortly afterwards and soon became good friends. Brahms brought Dvorák in contact with other composers, publishers and famous musicians. One of them was the renowned violinist Joseph Joachim, a good friend of Brahms for many years. Dvorák was invited to the Joachim home in Berlin, where he was cordially received. The violinist even organised a home concert for the first performance of Dvorák’s String Sextet and the Tenth String Quartet. The two men talked at great length, and Dvorák spoke of the violin concerto which he had recently started to compose. Joachim, who had not long before played the premiere of Brahms’s Violin Concerto, responded with enthusiasm. Dvorák spent the next few months labouring over the concerto and sent it to Joachim in the autumn of 1879.

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However, these are exactly the pieces I wanted to record and I’m grateful to Challenge Records for offering me the opportunity. This is a highly personal programme, and not just because I’m entirely on my own, with no pianist or orchestra. That was also the case on my previous disc, presenting violin solo music by Ysaÿe and Bach, but here the feeling is even stronger. It’s a programme of contradictions: the ostensible simplicity of Biber and Bach contrasting with the complexity of Bartók and Berio. It’s emotional but at the same time highly cerebral. In these contradictions I recognize myself. I don’t consider myself to be a violinist for whom virtuosity is the greatest aim; that is not why I became a violinist. But yet I’ve chosen a solo programme here. That is contradictory, but what we’re dealing with is greater music and not just greater virtuosity. This is my musical autograph.

Bach’s Chaconne is the focal point, to which the works of Bartok and Berio make strong references , making it the core of this programme. Biber’s Passacaglia provides focus, with its persistent repeated cadence of the four falling notes. This pulse underpins the entire recital: sometimes hidden and barely audible, like a sort of primeval pulse (as in the Berio), and sometimes quite clear.

I’ve known Bartók’s Sonata since I was a youngster, when my teacher Philippe Hirschhorn used to play it at our home. It’s a piece that has always stayed with me. I even used to have Dénes Zsigmondy’s recording of the fugue as the welcoming music on my answering machine. It is a real masterpiece, with perfect form, and Bartók occasionally gives us a glimpse of a cosmos that he can see and hear even though we can’t quite yet. It’s the pinnacle of what is possible on the violin, without having virtuosity as its objective.

The consonance – or actually the battle – between two notes lies at the heart of Berio’s Sequenza VIII. This also presents us with a degree of ugliness. But after the powerful confrontations, as the music gradually subsides in volume – firstly with an ordinary mute and then with the even quieter practice mute – these two notes end up forming a brotherly union. The battle has led to some good after all. This is a really emotional moment

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