![James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong - Bartok: Works for Violin and Piano, Vol. 2 (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/23/ehjdektrikyib_600eb3141eb9fab036e.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong – Bartok: Works for Violin and Piano, Vol. 2 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:05 minutes | 869 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos
James Ehnes has previously explored Béla Bartók’s concertos for violin and for viola, to great acclaim. This album is the second in his equally successful survey of Bartók’s chamber music for the violin. His accompanist, once more, is Andrew Armstrong, a pianist praised by critics for his passionate expression and dazzling technique.
The folk-inspired Sonata for Solo Violin was the last work that Bartók wrote for the instrument, not to mention the most challenging. In a departure from his usual practice, this work was written not for a fellow Hungarian, but rather for an artist born in New York where Bartók was now living: Yehudi Menuhin. Suitably impressed by a recital performance by Menuhin of his first Violin Sonata as well as Bach’s Sonata in C, he had no hesitation in accepting the violinist’s commission for a sonata that, like Bach’s, would be unaccompanied.
Almost half a century earlier, Bartók had written his Sonata for Violin and Piano in E minor. It was included in a concert given by graduating students of the Liszt Academy in June 1903, when a critic, most likely not realising just how right he would prove, hailed Bartók as ‘a phenomenal young genius, whose name today is known only to a few, but who is destined to play a great and brilliant role in the history of Hungarian music’.
Additionally on this album we have three groups of Bartók’s Romanian and Hungarian folk dances, folksongs, and folk tunes, arranged for violin variously by Zoltán Székely, Tivadar Országh, and Joseph Szigeti, often with direct involvement by the composer himself who helped fine-tune the new arrangements. James Ehnes also highlights the Romanian influences in Bartók’s Sonatina for piano, transcribed for violin by André Gertler, a student of Bartók’s.
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![Andrew Armstrong, James Ehnes - Bartók: Works for Violin and Piano, Vol. 1 (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/23/i3mt13pdi9m6a_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Andrew Armstrong, James Ehnes – Bartók: Works for Violin and Piano, Vol. 1 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:41 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos
This is the second volume in a series devoted to the works for strings by Béla Bartók, with James Ehnes the featured soloist. Earlier this year, Ehnes recorded the Violin and Viola Concertos (CHAN 10690), which was made Disc of the Month in Gramophone magazine. On this new recording, he turns to the Violin Sonatas and Rhapsodies, complemented by the earliest surviving work by Bartók for violin and piano, an Andante. He is accompanied by the pianist Andrew Armstrong.
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![Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner, James Ehnes, Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen - Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra; Dance Suite; Rhapsodies Nos. 1 & 2 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/23/uko24ust30dec_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner, James Ehnes, Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen – Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra; Dance Suite; Rhapsodies Nos. 1 & 2 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:20:24 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos
Among the rare works by Bartók for a full orchestra, the Dance Suite “immediately” precedes the Concerto for Orchestra, albeit by more than two decades… As with theConcerto, this was commissioned by Budapest City Hall for the 50th anniversary in 1923 of the unification of Buda, on the north bank of the Danube, with Pest, on the south. As so often with Bartók, this is “imaginary folk music”: the themes are assembled on a formal melodic and rhythmic base, made up from a stock of popular airs from Hungarian villages, but also from Romanian, Slovak and North African Arab sources. Unlike the two major orchestral works recorded here – the Concerto for Orchestra and the Dance Suite – the two rhapsodies for violin and orchestra from 1928 show us a Bartók who is returning to the “export” style of Eastern Europe, which he had inherited – like Brahms and Liszt before him – from Viennese café musicians: that is, from musicians much closer to the Romany accents than to the reality of Magyar folk music. The First Rhapsody is tinted with local colour thanks to the addition of a cimbalom in the orchestra, his one and only use of this instrument. As for the score for the Concerto for Orchestra – the most major work that he would produce in the last five years of his life in the USA, where he was a sick and demoralised refugee – it was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky. Bartók began the work in August 1943 and completed it in eight weeks, a remarkably short period which proves that the was genuinely reinvigorated by the work: “Perhaps it’s thanks to this improvement that I was able to write the work Koussevitzky commissioned – or vice versa,” he wrote. The work was performed in December 1944 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Bartók then altered the final portion, which became a little longer. On solo violin for the Rhapsodies we have James Ehnes, while Norway’s Bergen Orchestra is conducted with admirable clarity by Edward Gardner.
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![James Ehnes, Michael Collins, Amy Schwartz Moretti, Andrew Armstrong - Bartók: Chamber Works for Violin, Vol. 3 (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/23/joeyj5kdl6wia_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
James Ehnes, Michael Collins, Amy Schwartz Moretti, Andrew Armstrong – Bartók: Chamber Works for Violin, Vol. 3 (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:31 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos
James Ehnes presents his third album of chamber works by Bartók. The previous volumes have, along with his outstanding concerto disc, established his formidable reputation as a Bartók interpreter. Here Ehnes is joined by the pianist Andrew Armstrong, violinist Amy Schwartz Moretti, and Michael Collins, one of the world’s leading clarinettists.
The Sonatina, originally composed in 1915 for piano, was based on melodies which Bartók had collected during expeditions in Transylvania. The transcription for violin and piano heard here was produced ten years later by a young student of Bartók’s, Endre Gertler.
Bartók composed Contrasts in 1938 for the jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman and violinist Joseph Szigeti, who originally had requested a work in two movements, each with a cadenza for one of the featured instruments. Fulfilling this request, Bartók added a central slow movement, entitled ‘PihenÅ‘’ (Relaxation). The opening movement, ‘Verbunkos’, alludes to a march-like Hungarian military recruiting dance. The finale, entitled ‘Sebes’ (Quick), is a lively romp at the heart of which lies an unexpected episode of haunting calmness.
Besides writing for such outstanding musicians as Szigeti and Goodman, Bartók composed a lot of music for students, including the Forty-four Duos for two violins recorded here. These short pieces take material from a remarkably wide array of folk traditions and interlink the styles and culture of diverse peoples.
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![James Ehnes - Bach, J.S.: The Six Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/22/0774204877224_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
James Ehnes – Bach, J.S.: The Six Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:30:17 minutes | 1,48 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Analekta
Bach’s solo violin music has always been very dear to my heart and central to my performing repertoire. Being able to record these monumental works early in my career was a rare privilege, and I will always be grateful to Analekta for allowing me this wonderful opportunity. Though my interpretations have evolved over the years, and will continue to evolve throughout my life, it gives me great pleasure to revisit these recordings and remember with pride the incredible journey of recording these masterpieces. –James Ehnes
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James Ehnes, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Edward Gardner – Walton: Viola Concerto, Partita for Orchestra & Sonata for String Orchestra (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:42 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
In this third volume of Edward Gardner’s Walton series with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, James Ehnes leaves his violin to tackle the taxing soloist role in the Viola Concerto. In a recent Strad interview, Ehnes confesses: ‘This is a piece I have loved since I was a teenager, so it is wonderful that the opportunity has come my way to record it… With Walton’s Viola Concerto, none of the writing is impossible but a lot of it is close. And in a way that is exactly where you want it to be: on the edge of technical limitations. There’s a tremendous amount of excitement in that.’ This album in surround sound also features two much later works: the 1957 Partita for Orchestra and the Sonata for String Orchestra, adapted in 1971 from the String Quartet in A minor of 1945 – 47. There is a striking contrast between the uncomfortable modernism of the up-and-coming young composer’s Viola Concerto and the relaxed brilliance of the mature Partita. But the Sonata shows Walton late in his life re-engaging as an arranger with his earlier manner, and so with the characteristic vein of restless unease that runs through most of his output.
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