Composer: Robert Kahn
Performer: Julia Bushkova, Arsentiy Kharitonov
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Toccata
Catalogue: TOCC0021
Release: 2014
Size: 934 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 5
01. I. Allegro moderato e energico
02. II. Adagio ma non troppo
03. III. Allegro vivace
Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 26
04. I. Allegro
05. II. Moderato
06. III. Allegro non troppo, ma con fuoco e poco a capriccio
Violin Sonata No. 3 in E Major, Op. 50
07. I. Andante sostenuto
08. II. Allegro molto vivace
09. III. Adagio
Robert Kahn, born in Mannheim in 1865, was one of the oldest Jewish composers to have to flee from Hitler – he left Germany in 1938 and settled in Biddenden in Kent, where he died in 1951.
He produced a large body of gloriously attractive chamber music, expertly crafted and basically Brahmsian in style.
His three violin sonatas, written over a twenty-year-period at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, reveal a lyrical composer in the Romantic mainstream but capable of considerable formal inventiveness.
This is the first recording of these highly attractive works.
Julia Bushkova, professor of the University of North Texas, was born into a family of renowned violinists in Moscow. She began study of the violin at the age of five and made her concerto debut at the age of fifteen in Poland and now appears on concert stages and in festivals all around the world.
Arsentiy Kharitonov studied at the Rimsky-Korsakov College of Music of the St Petersburg Conservatory in Russia, where his musical progress was immediate and astounding. Soon, he was giving solo recitals, which featured his own compositions and brilliant improvisations in variety of musical styles in addition to the standard piano repertoire. He is now based in the United States. His first two Toccata Classics CDs of the piano music of Leo Ornstein have attracted rapturous reviews.