Joshua Bell / Academy of St. Martin in the Fields FOR THE LOVE OF BRAHMS

With a career spanning more than 30 years as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist and conductor, Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated violinists of his era. An exclusive Sony Classical artist, Bell has recorded more than 40 CDs garnering Grammy, Mercury, Gramophone and Echo Klassik awards and is recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize. Named the Music Director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in 2011, he is the only person to hold this post since Sir Neville Marriner formed the orchestra in 1958. In September 2016, Sony Classical releases Bell’s newest album, For the Love of Brahms, with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Jeremy Denk.

A tribute to the love and friendship shared by Brahms and Schumann, the album is Joshua’s latest with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (where he has served as Music Director since 2011) and highlights his longstanding relationship with the orchestra as well as two guest artists: cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Jeremy Denk.

The album is the the first recording of an unusual coupling: Brahms’s well-known Double Concerto, with Joshua and Steven paired with the slow movement of Schumann’s rarely heard Violin Concerto arranged with a codetta by Benjamin Britten. Joshua, Steven, and Jeremy then unite for Brahms’s first published chamber work, the Piano Trio in B Major, heard here in its rarely performed 1854 version.