Vilde Frang / Michail Lifits PAGANINI - SCHUBERT

“I have heard an angel sing,” wrote Schubert after he heard Paganini play in Vienna in 1828. Vilde Frang, partnered by pianist Michael Lifits, juxtaposes and links works by these two violinist-composers, who lived vastly different lives, yet are musically connected. Both found inspiration in the human voice and Frang sheds new light on Schubert’s demands for virtuosity and on Paganini’s sensitive musicality.

Vilde Frang, partnered by pianist Michael Lifits, has assembled a programme that juxtaposes music by two violinist-composers of the early 19th century, Franz Schubert and Niccolò Paganini. While they lived vastly different lives and inhabited diverse aesthetic worlds, there are links to be found between them.

Through the juxtaposition, Frang wants to highlight Schubert’s capacity for virtuosity and Paganini’s musicality and sensitivity. “It’s the contrasts that appeal to me,” she says. For her, the key connection between Schubert and Paganini is the inspiration they both found in the human voice. The album includes variations that Paganini wrote on themes from operas by Rossini (Tancredi) and Paisiello (La molinara), and the ‘grand caprice’ that the violinist Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst – considered Paganini’s greatest successor – based on one of Schubert’s most thrilling songs, Erlkönig. It sets a poem by Goethe that tells of a frantic night-time horse-ride by a father and his young son, who is tempted by a wicked spirit, the Erlking. When they reach their destination, the child is dead. “This Erlkönig is a gift to the violinist. There is such precision and accuracy in Ernst’s transcription – it works so well that it sounds like it was written for the violin. And then there is the challenge of characterising the galloping horse, the father, the son and the Erlkönig himself.”

Paganini, born in 1782, achieved enormous success as a virtuoso performer. He lived until 1840, 12 years after Schubert’s death at the age of just 31. “There is an extreme contrast between Paganini, who became a living legend, and Schubert, who tragically did not achieve the fame he deserved,” says Frang. In Spring 1828, just months before his death, Schubert saw Paganini give a concert in Vienna, where the violinist was causing a sensation. He bought tickets for himself and two friends – probably with money that he had earned from a successful concert given in his benefit on 26th March. Unfortunately, Schubert’s concert received little coverage in the Viennese press, perhaps because Paganini was stealing the musical limelight at the time. After Schubert heard Paganini play in Vienna in Spring 1828, he wrote “I have heard an angel sing.”

Frang cites Paganini’s influence on Schubert in such works as the Rondeau brilliant in B minor, D 895, and the Fantaisie in C major, D 943, both of which were probably composed for the young violinist Josef Slavík. When Frédéric Chopin heard him play, he wrote: “He played like a second Paganini, but a Paganini rejuvenated, one who with time will surpass the first ... He makes the listener speechless and brings tears to one's eyes.” Sadly, Josef Slavík died in 1833 at the age of just 27.

“There is a lot of virtuosity to be found in Schubert’s music for violin, but it is also very finely and delicately made,” says Vilde Frang. “He can be five years old in one phrase and 75 years old in the next, or both ages in the same phrase. When you play his music, it can feel like walking on eggshells. Rather than trying to make the music happen, you have to let it happen.

“As for Paganini, he could be a very lyrical composer too. After all, he cherished the art of the song, and composers like Brahms, Rachmaninov, Liszt and Lutosławski all found inspiration in his work. I’d like to associate him with sincerity, purity and a sense of nobility. There’s an almost religious purity in some of his Caprices, and his Cantabile, which I play on this album, is a bit of a sacred moment: it’s rather like a prayer.”

Vilde Frang, Lawrence Power, Nicolas Altstaedt, Barnabás Kelemen, Katalin Kokas, Alexander Lonquich VERESS String Trio BARTÓK Piano Quintet

The Lockenhaus International Chamber Music Festival is regarded as one of Austria’s most prestigious festivals: it was created by the violinist Gidon Kremer to offer a new vision of chamber music and the opportunity to create musical exchanges in an intimate setting. The cellist Nicolas Altstaedt succeeded Gidon Kremer in 2012 and now continues the spirit of the festival. For this first recording in partnership with Lockenhaus, he is joined by experienced partners, including the Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang, the Hungarian violinist Barnabás Kelemen, the German pianist Alexander Lonquich – whose Schubert double album was recently released on Alpha (Alpha 433) – and the British violist Lawrence Power. Together they have selected two works, the Piano Quintet of Béla Bartók, a demanding composition, rarely performed even though it is considered an intensely personal work, and the String Trio of Sándor Veress, a former student of Bartók. Nicolas Altstaedt has joined Alpha for several recording projects that will illustrate the full range of his talents, in a highly eclectic range of music.

"What makes this CD unmissable is the Veress Trio, a masterpiece and a performance to match. I’ve already pencilled it in as a potential contender for next year’s Gramophone Awards."  Gramophone

Vilde Frang BARTÓK Violin Concerto No. 1 ENESCU Octet

Bela Bartók and George Enescu were born in same Year - 1881, Bartók in the Austrian-Hungarian city of Nagyszentmiklos (today Romania), Enescu in the Moldovian town of Liveni-Botosani (today Romania). 

Both pieces on this recording are youth works of theirs - 1900 (Enescu's Octet) and 1907 (Bartók's first violin concerto). Both works were neglected - Enescu's Octet for nearly a decade due to the challenges of the piece (being premiered in 1909) , and Bartók's concerto was neglected by its dedicatee, the violinist Stefi Geyer (who was also his young love), and was published only after her death, in 1956 (being premiered in 1958). Bartók and Enescu both died in self-chosen exile - Bartók 1945 in New York, Enescu 1955 in Paris - yet both were respected and admired for being contributors to the development of their countries’ culture and art, particularly as great ambassadors for the folk music.

Vilde Frang / José Gallardo HOMAGE

Vilde Frang’s Homage is more than a captivating programme of short pieces for violin and piano, it is also a homage to the players of the Golden Age of the Violin, such as Fritz Kreisler, Leopold Auer and Joseph Szigeti. The recital includes music originally conceived not just for the violin, but also for piano, orchestra or voice, and proves once again, as BBC Music Magazine wrote, that “Frang has the knack of breathing life into every note, whether by variations in phrasing, attack, tone or dynamic.”

Vilde Frang has conceived the album as something of a homage to her illustrious predecessors. Born in 1986, she is clearly very much a violinist of today, and – as a Norwegian trained in Germany – she did not grow up in the Central and Eastern-European tradition of Heifetz, Kreisler, Auer and Szigeti. That being said, she brings her own, distinctively captivating magic to her instrument. As Gramophone wrote of her performance of the Korngold concerto, a work that has its roots in the composer’s glorious late-Romantic scores for Hollywood: “Frang has a winning way with the rubato that makes the melodies yearn and smile, but there’s a fragile thread of silver woven through her passagework that bounces off the glinting accompaniment of the Frankfurt RSO as an opalescent gown catches the light in a mirrored ballroom. Fresh thought illuminates each phrase and she has the technique to bring off every idea, from the wild caprice of the first movement’s dash to the double-bar, to a coquettish (or demure?) restraint in the finale’s big tune.” (Warner Classics)

Andreas Brantelid / Marianna Shirinyan / Vilde Frang CHOPIN Cello Sonata - Piano Trio - Grand Duo

It is grand to hear novice players so successfully take on three of Chopin's chamber pieces, the Cello Sonata, Piano Trio, and Grand Duo for cello and piano. There have certainly been great recordings of these works in the past -- one thinks immediately of those by Mstislav Rostropovich and Jacqueline du Pré -- but the energy, enthusiasm, and sincerity that cellist Andreas Brantelid, pianist Marianna Shirinyan, and violinist Vilde Frang bring to this music more than justifies preserving their performances. Brantelid has a big but nuanced tone, an elegant but impressive technique, and an obvious affinity for the music, and he is well-matched by Shirinyan's polished technique and empathic accompaniments and Frang's easy virtuosity and lyrical interpretation. The ensemble is poised but comfortable and the interpretations are cogent and compelling. Captured in close but smooth digital sound, these performances deserve to be heard by anyone who loves this music, or great chamber music playing. (James Leonard)

Vilde Frang NIELSEN - TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concertos

Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang made her debut in 2010 with a pairing of concertos by Sibelius and Prokofiev. She repeats the formula here with works by Nielsen and Tchaikovsky, a somewhat risky move. But the fact is that she's exceptionally good in these repertories. Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, is in a way a work constrained by its tremendous virtuosity and the long performing tradition of which it is a part. It's hard to come up with something really new to say to it, but Frang makes a strong contribution with a graceful reading that avoids the tendency to push the big passages of the outer movement to a point just short of (or, in concert, just past) where a string breaks from the effort to get maximum volume out of it. Instead she favors detailed shaping of complicated stretches of passagework. It's quite distinctive, but the real news here is the Nielsen Violin Concerto, Op. 33, which had its premiere in 1912 and is not terribly often performed. It's a complex work in a mixture of idioms, from what annotator David Fanning calls neo-Baroque (actually much of it anticipates the sparkling neo-Mozartian language of the opera Maskarade), to developing figuration that anticipates the structures of Nielsen's symphonic works, to Tchaikovskian passages. These last help tie the program together in a novel way: how did Nielsen, a generation after Sibelius, react to the sounds of Tchaikovsky in his head? The Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Eivind Gullberg Jensen is not much more than workmanlike, but this is overall a fresh treatment of some highly familiar music and some that is less so.  (James Manheim)

Vilde Frang / Michail Lifits BARTÓK - GRIEG - R. STRAUSS Violin Sonatas

Following her successful debut album of violin concertos by Jean Sibelius and Sergey Prokofiev, Vilde Frang turns to chamber music for her second release on EMI, in a program of violin sonatas by Edvard Grieg, Béla Bartók, and Richard Strauss. These are not obscure works, but they are infrequently played and less often recorded, so Frang's choices make the disc interesting, as well as a bit of a gamble. Grieg's Violin Sonata No. 1 in F major, Op. 8, is characteristically lyrical and melancholy, despite the piece's predominantly major tonality, and the tunefulness of this youthful work makes it immediately accessible. The Sonata for Solo Violin by Bartók is austere, angular, and harmonically bracing, so listeners who expect a relaxing experience should instead prepare for a challenging modernist work that requires considerable concentration. Strauss' Violin Sonata in E flat major, Op. 18, returns to the sweet melodious strains of Romanticism, yet because it is an early work, it will surprise listeners who don't know that it bears more resemblance to the music of Schumann than to that of the mature Strauss. In the two sonatas for violin and piano, Frang and her accompanist Michail Lifits are completely in accord, and their interpretations of the music are fully realized in robust rhythms, sympathetic exchanges, and long-breathed lines. In the Bartók, Frang carries the music alone, and is thus exposed to the bête noire of solo violin playing, the apparent scratchiness of double and triple stops. These, along with Bartók's strident dissonances and dry expressions, may make this sonata difficult to appreciate on first hearing. But because the sonata places demands on both performer and listener, Frang was bold to include it and deserves credit for an exceptional performance. (James Leonard)

Vilde Frang BRITTEN - KORNGOLD Violin Concertos

Vilde Frang has long dreamed of recording the violin concertos of Erich Korngold and Benjamin Britten – two highly contrasted pieces, both written in the USA around the time of World War II, and a unique pairing. As The Strad magazine has said: “Vilde Frang … weaves an emotional narrative that is utterly spellbinding … it feels as though the music’s inner soul is being revealed for the very first time.”

Gramophone Recording of the Month: "These are urgently communicative, potentially transformative accounts of scores which, if no longer confined to the fringes of the repertoire, have yet to command universal admiration...Vilde Frang writes that it has long been her wish to bring together two of her favourite concertos. If you’ve been impressed by her previous releases you’ll already have this one marked down as a compulsory purchase and likely Awards contender."

The Guardian: "Her sound is superb – icy, fiery, whispered, ultra-rich – and her phrases pour out fearlessly, urgently. It’s a fresh and convincing performance."

Vilde Frang MOZART Violin Concertos 1 & 5 - Sinfonia Concertante

Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang made her orchestral debut to great acclaim at the age of just 13, with the Oslo Philharmonic and Mariss Jansons. On that occasion, she chose Sarasate's Carmen Fantasia, and in the fifteen years that have followed she has taken on the great Romantic and moderns, the Nordics and Russians: Sibelius and Prokofiev concertos for her debut album, followed by Tchaikovsky and Nielsen. 

Now, at 28, this young but serious star violinist at last commits Mozart concertos to disc, in lively, intimate readings with English chamber orchestra Arcangelo, led by Jonathan Cohen. 

The impetus for this album was a 2012 orchestral tour of Asia conducted by Cohen in which Vilde Frang performed Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5. The vibrancy of their musical collaboration was something both artists were keen to repeat and commit to disc. 

Jonathan Cohen writes: “This was an important project for us to do with Vilde. Her poetic and sensitive playing and her beautiful silvery sound really serves Mozart and she was looking to collaborate with an ensemble such as ours well versed in the style and culture of Viennese classicism." 

As complement to Mozart's First and Fifth Violin Concertos, Frang chose the beloved Sinfonia Concertante, enlisting Ukrainian viola virtuoso Maxim Rysanov as her duo partner. 

"She and Maxim I think have produced a very special Sinfonia Concertante, which is a particularly extraordinary composition," says Cohen. 

The album has already been praised for the lightness and warmth, elegance and playfulness of the dialogue between soloist and ensemble. "The solo concertos are terrific. The First is often seen as slight, but Frang, with an endlessly varied palette of colours, delights in showing us how wrong we are," declares Sinfini Music. "She melds eloquently with the ensemble and manages to convey an artless simplicity."