Strauss / Bartok [CD]

"The only violin concerto that Richard Strauss composed at the age of just 18 is a beautiful, energetic, and brilliantly structured work that already displays numerous allusions to and characteristics of his later style," says Alena Baeva. With her longtime musical collaborator Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, she has found the ideal partners to record this relatively rarely performed concerto as well as another early masterpiece: Bartók’s First Violin Concerto, which is essentially a love letter to the violinist Stefi Geyer, who was nine years his junior. The “Stefi theme” (D–F#–A–C#) forms the basis of the first movement… yet she never played it, as she had broken up with him just a few days before he completed the concerto… Bartók’s First Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra rounds out this program. Just a few days after the premiere, the composer traveled to Bremen for his next concert in the Glockensaal, where this recording was made 94 years later.