Classics Today US, Classics Today France 10/10, Disc of the Month.
Vadim Gluzman and his Stradivarius violin have enraptured listeners on several discs previously released on BIS, including his acclaimed double-bill of Tchaikovsky's and Glazunov's violin concertos in 2008. That disc received a number of distinctions and caused the reviewer in Diapason to comment that 'from the very first bars one is seduced by his extreme sensitivity and the freedom of his sound, and a playing which often calls up that of the great Russian virtuosos of the beginning of the 20th century.' His colleague in Strad Magazine was in complete agreement, remarking on Gluzman's 'honeyed tone' recreating 'that innate Russian musicality of a previous generation...' On the present disc Vadim Gluzman, with the eminent support of the Residentie Orkest Den Haag under Neeme Järvi, performs works for violin and orchestra composed in the three years following the end of World War II, by two composers whose fates were very different. Exiled from his native Austria, Erich Korngold became a celebrated composer of film music in Hollywood - and in his Violin Concerto in D major reused a number of themes from different films. Balys Dvarionas, on the other hand, is even today barely known outside his native Lithuania, even though his Violin Concerto in B minor was taken up by the legendary David Oistrakh. But the two men are united in their music's heartfelt and unabashed romanticism - a romanticism which Vadim Gluzman is perfectly placed to convey.
