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Brahms: Violin Concerto; Suk: Fantasy on CD

Dutch violinist Liza Ferschtmann makes her debut on Rubicon Classics with an album of Brahms and Suk. Brahms's violin concerto was written with his great friend firmly in mind - composer and violinist Joseph Joachim gave Brahms advice on the concerto, on matters such as the balance between violin and orchestra. This concerto pushes the violin (and the soloist) to great extremes of register and expression, whilst ultimately relying on the composer's mature mastery of thematic development and formal planning to create one of the greatest of all violin concertos. Also added to the mix was the influence of Beethoven's then neglected violin concerto (a work Joachim championed), Bach's solo violin sonata No.3, and various works by Joachim. Josef Suk emerged in the early 1900s as one of the leading Czech composers, ranking alongside, Novak and Ostrčil. Together they were known as the 'modernists', willing to absorb musical ideas from all over Europe. Despite Suk's happy marriage (to Dvorak's daughter), the Fantasy is infused with melancholy and drama from the opening. It is brilliantly scored, with influences of Richard Strauss detectable in the quicksilver changes of mood.