Britten: Violin Concerto, Double Concerto & Lachrymae

Long recognized as an outstanding chamber musician, Anthony Marwood has more recently been making waves as a concerto soloist, with two contributions to the Romantic Violin Concerto series and now a disc of Britten with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov. The youthful Violin Concerto, with its mix of anguished lyricism and changeability of mood nods to both Berg (whose own Violin Concerto had made a profound impression on Britten) and Prokofiev but the result is entirely personal.

The still earlier Double Concerto, for violin and viola, is impressive above all for its precocious confidence; written when Britten was just eighteen and still a student at the Royal College of Music, it had to wait sixty-five years before receiving its belated premiere in 1997 at the 50th Aldeburgh Festival. Anthony Marwood is joined by star violist Lawrence Power (who makes two appearances in Hyperion’s new releases this month). The viola was Britten’s own instrument and his Lachrymae, inspired by a Dowland song, brings us to the other end of his career, for though it was composed in 1950, it wasn’t orchestrated until 1976, the year of his death.

CDA67801  64 minutes 16 seconds
INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW 'OUTSTANDING' AWARD
SUNDAY TIMES CLASSICAL CD OF THE WEEK
‘[Violin Concerto] A lithe, spiky, rhythmical performance, bristling with satire in the Shostakovich style … every phrase is highly charged … [Double Concerto] Marwood and his viola colleagu ...
‘Marwood is a vivacious soloist in the Violin Concerto and particularly compelling in its magnificent Passacaglia, which is expertly paced … we are left in no doubt about the levels of searing co ...
‘A rarity… energetic and characterful, [the Double Concerto] emerges strongly from the performance of the soloists here. But it is quite overshadowed in originality and richness by the Violin Concerto ...