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Myths & Melodies on CD

The musically and technically highly demanding programme with which Stefan Hempel and Daniel Seroussi make their audite debut offers an impressive panorama of the development of literature for violin accompanied by piano in the first third of the 20th century. While the great works of the 19th century from Beethoven and Mendelssohn Bartholdy to Brahms and Tchaikovsky focused on melodic power and virtuoso brilliance, the compositions performed here by Korngold, Szymanowski, Prokofiev and Messiaen from the years 1915 to 1933 open up new areas of expression for the instrument. The intensity of Hempel's and Seroussi's interpretations make it clear that the violin, no less than the piano, is a universal instrument that effortlessly does justice to the diversity of the languages of musical modernism. The programme is complemented by the transcription of Ravel's famous piano piece Pavane pour une infante défunte by the Polish violinist Paul Kochanski and - as a downloadable bonus track - Gabriel Fauré's melancholy Morceau de concours from 1903.