The Brussels-based British composer Nigel Clarke is renowned for his virtuosic style, and an uncompromising contemporary musical language that speaks with an authentic voice to today’s audiences. This world premiere recording of his symphony for violin and orchestra The Prophecies of Merlin is inspired by the 12th-century text De gestis Britonum by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and it casts the soloist as the maddened Merlin, either raging alone or caught up in the wild tumult of the orchestra. This score brims with rhythmic drive and bravura orchestration, juxtaposing savage musical outbursts with moments of sheer transcendental beauty.

This album, featuring several of the UK’s most accomplished performers, explores the Macedonian composer’s search for ‘chroma’ (colour) in both harmonic and formal structures, traditional and experimental sonorities and in a need for deeply dedicated performances of physical directness.

This album features perhaps some of the best (certainly best-known) works by the top two violin composers working in Modena, Italy, at the end of the 17th century. Vitali and Colombi were both quite prolific and produced pieces of wide variety of form, not whittled down to the standard ‘dance suite’ of the middle and late baroque. While the Vitali works have been recorded previously in a version for ensemble, this is the first recording of the pieces in their solo format – and the same applies to the Colombi and anonymous pieces. The album is a fine and fitting sequel to Skærved’s previous solo recording “Florish in the Key” (Athene ATH 23211) which presented contemporaneous (late 17th century) solo violin music from London. “Genuinely intriguing” – Early Music Review; “Excellent… instantly attractive… uniformly high quality” – Infodad)

This is the fifth disc in a series that sets Beethoven’s violin sonatas in their social and musical context. Beethoven’s three Sonatas Op 12, mark the beginning of an extraordinary group of works which would climax with the Op 96 Sonata which he completed at the end of 1812. Beethoven and Romberg shared a history as string players. In 1790, Romberg joined Beethoven in the electoral court orchestra in Bonn, led by Beethoven’s erstwhile violin teacher, Franz Anton Ries. This laid the foundations for Beethoven when he instituted his team of string players in Vienna in the years following his arrival there in 1792.

Beethoven’s three sonatas for Piano and Violin Op. 30 were dedicated to Tsar Alexander 1st. He had been educated by his grandmother Catherine the Great and was considered to be a true child of the Enlightenment. The three manuscripts of the Op. 30 sonatas are among the most expressive of the surviving original material of Beethoven’s chamber music. These works were a direct result of the collaboration with Beethoven’s violin teacher, Ignaz Schuppanzigh – who was in fact the dedicatee of the Op. 12 sonatas. The final piece on the CD was written by another significant influence on Beethoven’s work – Franz Clement. This is the third disc in a series that sets Beethoven’s sonatas in their social and musical context – in this case the context being Schuppanzigh.

Peter Sheppard Skaerved and Aaron Short have assembled an interesting program mostly of very rarely heard works. The sonata is, of course, standard repertoire and has been recorded by nearly every major violinist since Fritz Kreisler and Szymon Goldberg; and, whileSkaerved and Shorr don't have big-time soloist pizzazz, they know their way around classical scores better than most big-time soloists, and this is a very satisfying, intelligent interpretation of that score.