Virtuoso Leonidas Kavakos & Enrico Pace

• 1 Danse Russe 02:52
• 2 Chanson Russe 04:11
• 3 Caprice Basque, Op.24 05:25
• 4 Romanza andaluza, Op. 22, No.1 05:04
• 5 Recuerdos de la Alhambra 02:41
• 6 The Miller's Dance 02:36
• 7 Introduction And Variations On Nel Cor Piu Non Mi Sento 12:51
• 8 Capriccio-Valse, Op.7 06:14
• 9 Waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier 07:55
• 10 Andante rubato, alla zingaresca 06:01
• 11 Reveille 05:14
• 12 La Capricieuse, Op. 17 04:05
• 13 Valse sentimentale, Op.51, No.6 03:00
• 14 God Save The King - Variations for Solo Violin 06:35
• 15 Humoresque, Op.101, No.7 04:02
• 16 Légende, Op.17 07:40
• Total Runtime 01:26:26

Info for Virtuoso

The violin encore has a long, honourable history, anchored in the nineteenth century, and most of the pieces on this recording are associated with great players. We can imagine one of these touring virtuosi travelling across Europe, trying to play something to please the locals at each stop.

As the “celebrity violin recital” established itself, genre pieces became part of the programme. The violinist and accompanist would begin with a Baroque sonata, then play a concerto, and the first half would end with a piece calculated to provoke applause. Equal care would be given to selecting opening and closing pieces for the second half, which would include a major sonata, often Beethoven’s “Kreutzer”. The rest would be given over to short pieces, more of which would be played as encores. The rise of the sonata recital, pioneered by the legendary duo of Adolf Busch and Rudolf Serkin, killed off the old-fashioned sequence, but something was lost in the process.

Our tour begins in Paris, where Igor Stravinsky was based in the 1930s, with two pieces reflecting his friendship with the Polish-born American violinist Samuel Dushkin (1891–1976). In 1931 Stravinsky wrote his Violin Concerto for Dushkin, following it with a Duo concertant that they could play together. For their joint concerts the two collaborated on transcriptions from Stravinsky’s existing works, recording some in 1933. Danse russe comes from the first scene of the 1911 ballet Petrushka. Chanson russe, or The Russian Maiden’s Song, is the soprano aria from Mavra, a little opera buffa premiered in Paris in 1922.

We move to Spain, one of the countries where the rising tide of nationalism in the late nineteenth century was so beneficial to music. The scintillating virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, trained in Paris, caught the beginning of this movement and enriched the repertoire with many pieces, such as eight Spanish Dances. Romanza andaluza — a romantic effusion in Andalusian style, as its name implies, with evocative passages in double-stops — is the third of these. Caprice basque, dedicated to Otto Goldschmidt, Sarasate’s manager and husband of the soprano Jenny Lind, is a separate piece: although in 3/4 and 6/8, it is based on dances from the Basque zortzico tradition, which are usually in 5/8. Two that have been identified are Desde que nace el día and Tres Señoritas de San Sebastián.

Guitarist Francisco Tárrega, who caught the essence of Spanish folklore in his compositions, wrote Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra) in 1896 as a study in tremolo. On the violin, as in this transcription by Ruggiero Ricci, it is a test of bow control. …

Leonidas Kavakos, violin
Enrico Pace, piano

Leonidas Kavakos
has established himself as a violinist and artist of rare quality, known at the highest level for his virtuosity, superb musicianship and the integrity of his playing. International recognition first came while Kavakos was still in his teens, winning the Sibelius Competition in 1985 and, three years later, the Paganini Competition.

Kavakos now works with the world’s major orchestras and conductors – Vienna Philharmonic, Berliner Philharmoniker, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Royal Concertge­bouw, London Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, Budapest Festival, La Scala Philharmonic, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has been invited as tour soloist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus/Chailly, Vienna Philharmonic/Chailly and the Royal Concertgebouw/Jansons, and in the 2012/13 season, he was the focus of the London Symphony Orchestra’s UBS Soundscapes LSO Artist Portrait as well as the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Artist-in-Residence.

With his probing and analytical approach, coupled with exceptional virtuosity, Kavakos brings authority and depth of expression to the great concerti of the 19th and 20th centuries that are the mainstay of his repertoire. However, he is known too for his interpretations of Bach and Mozart, as well as of works such as Dutilleux L’arbre des songes and Hartmann Concerto funèbre.

Kavakos is a committed chamber musician and recitalist and is a favoured artist at the Verbier, Montreux-Vevey, Bad Kissingen and Edinburgh festivals and at the Salzburg Festival, where in August 2012, together with Enrico Pace, he played a complete cycle of Beethoven’s violin sonatas that was recorded by Bavarian Radio and broadcast by BR in the autumn of 2012 as part of a television documentary about the violinist. He also performed the cycle with Pace at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the two artists have recorded the complete sonatas for Decca Classics. In the 2012/13 season, Kavakos and Emanuel Ax played the cycle in the Musikverein, Vienna, as well as a single Beethoven sonata programme in Berlin. Kavakos’s other distinguished chamber-music partners include Gautier and Renaud Capuçon, Antoine Tamestit, Nikolai Lugansky, Denis Kozhukhin and Yuja Wang, with whom he will give a series of recitals in Europe in the 2013/14 season.

Leonidas Kavakos is increasingly recognised as a conductor of considerable gift and musicianship. He has worked as conductor/soloist with the Boston Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Stockholm Philharmonic, Gothen­burg Symphony, La Scala Philharmonic, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Conducting debuts in the 2012/13 season included the Finnish Radio and Vienna Symphony orchestras, and he returned to the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in October 2012, where he appeared in a variety of programmes in a special series Focus Kavakos. His extensive plans for the 2013/14 season include conducting debuts with the London Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne.

Kavakos’s first release as an exclusive Decca recording artist was a 3-CD set of the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas (“...impeccable technique, sweet sound, sensitivity to the mood and texture of the music and awareness of both the big picture and the fine detail” – Daily Telegraph), with pianist Enrico Pace in January 2013. October brings his new recording of the Brahms concerto with Riccardo Chailly conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Kavakos already has a distinguished discography with a number of award-winning recordings – his Mendelssohn Violin Concerto disc receiving an ECHO Klassik award for Best Concerto Recording 2009; he has also recorded live Mozart’s five Violin Concertos and Symphony No. 39 with Camerata Salzburg. In 1991, shortly after winning the Sibelius Competition, Kavakos won a Gramophone Award for the first ever recording of the original version of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto (1903/04), recorded on BIS. For ECM, he has released recordings of sonatas by Enescu and Ravel with pianist Péter Nagy, and a recording of works by Bach and Stravinsky.

Leonidas Kavakos plays the ‘Abergavenny’ Stradivarius of 1724.

Enrico Pace
was born in Rimini, Italy. He studied piano with Franco Scala both at the Rossini Conservatory, Pesaro, where he graduated in Conducting and Composition, and later at the Accademia Pianistica Incontri col Maestro, Imola. Jacques De Tiège was a valued mentor. Winning the Utrecht International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in 1989 marked the beginning of his international career.

Since then Enrico Pace has toured extensively, performing in cities such as Amsterdam (Concertgebouw), Milan (Sala Verdi and Teatro alla Scala), Rome, Berlin, London (Wigmore Hall), Dublin, Munich, Salzburg, Prague and various cities in South America. He has performed at numerous festivals including La Roque-d’Anthéron, Verbier, Lucerne, Rheingau, Schleswig-Holstein and Husum.

He has worked with among others the following conductors: Roberto Benzi, David Robertson, Andrey Boreyko, Mark Elder, Janos Fürst, Eliahu Inbal, Lawrence Foster, Kazimierz Kord, Jiří Kout, Gianandrea Noseda, Walter Weller, Carlo Rizzi, Jan Latham-Koenig, Vassily Sinaisky, Stanislav Skrowaczewski, Bruno Weil and Antoni Wit.

A very popular soloist, he has performed with many major orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of Santa Cecilia Rome, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Dutch Radio Philharmonic, the Netherlands Philharmonic, the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the MDR-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the RTE National Symphony Orchestra, the G. Verdi Orchestra Milan and the Filarmonica Toscanini Parma.

Enrico Pace greatly enjoys chamber music and has played with the Keller Quartet, the RTE Vanbrugh Quartet, the Quartetto Prometeo and with cellist Daniel Müller-Schott, clarinetist Sharon Kam and horn player Marie Luise Neunecker. He participates regularly in chamber music festivals and has visited Delft, Moritzburg, Risør, Kuhmo, Montreux, Stresa and West Cork.

Recent and forthcoming highlights include(d) engagements with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Hungarian National Philharmonic, the Göteborg and London Symphony Orchestras, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and the Rheinische Philharmonie; the Beethoven Sonata cycle with Leonidas Kavakos in among others New York (Carnegie Hall), Athens, Florence, Milan, Amsterdam, Moscow and Tokyo and at the Salzburg Festival and the Beethovenfest Bonn, as well as further duo recitals in the USA, Europe and China; Bach Sonatas with Frank Peter Zimmermann in among others New York, Amsterdam, Zürich, Frankfurt, Bamberg and Japan; a performance at the Scala in Milan of Schubert’s Schwanengesang with Matthias Goerne; recitals with viola player Antoine Tamestit in Zürich, Frankfurt and Cologne; recitals with Akiko Suwanai in Japan; recitals with cellist Sung-Won Yang in Korea and Japan, and solo recitals in among others the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Herkulessaal in Munich.

Enrico Pace enjoys on-going partnerships with violinists Leonidas Kavakos, Frank Peter Zimmermann and Liza Ferschtman. With Mr. Kavakos and cellist Patrick Demenga he recorded the piano trios by Mendelssohn (Sony Classical). And his recording of the complete Beethoven Sonatas for piano and violin with Mr. Kavakos was released by Decca Classics in January 2013. With Mr. Zimmermann he recorded the Busoni violin sonata no. 2 and the six Sonatas for violin and piano BWV 1014-1019 by J.S. Bach for Sony Classical.

In 2011 the label Piano Classics released his highly praised solo recording of the Années de pèlerinage “Suisse” and “Italie” of Franz Liszt.

Booklet for Virtuoso