Erwin Schulhoff: Violin Sonatas
Tanja Becker-Bender (violin) & Markus Becker (piano)
Awards:
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BBC Music Magazine, March 2011, Disc of the month
Tanja Becker-Benda offers absolutely stunning playing throughout this warmly recorded disc. She makes light work of the formidable technical challenges in the opening Allegro con fuoco of the...
Erwin Schulhoff: Violin Sonatas
Tanja Becker-Bender (violin) & Markus Becker (piano)
Purchase product
Awards:
-
BBC Music Magazine, March 2011, Disc of the month
Tanja Becker-Benda offers absolutely stunning playing throughout this warmly recorded disc. She makes light work of the formidable technical challenges in the opening Allegro con fuoco of the...
About
The German violinist Tanja Becker-Bender burst onto the recording scene with a dazzling set of Paganini’s Caprices which thrilled the critics. She appears here in a second disc for Hyperion with her compatriot, Markus Becker, who has made two acclaimed recordings for the label.
Erwin Schulhoff: jazz enthusiast, sometime Dadaist, surrealist and committed communist. These are some of the labels that spring to mind for this extraordinary figure, but Schulhoff was a more complex and wide-ranging musician than any neat tags suggest. This Prague-born prodigy had an intensive training rooted in the Austro-German tradition from before the age of ten, and later studied with Max Reger and Fritz Steinbacher. His music is impossible to pin down stylistically – even at a particular stage of his career. His music for violin is often outrageously virtuosic and never less than fascinating.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
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BBC Music MagazineMarch 2011Disc of the month
March 2011
Tanja Becker-Benda offers absolutely stunning playing throughout this warmly recorded disc. She makes light work of the formidable technical challenges in the opening Allegro con fuoco of the Solo Sonata and brings an unexpected sense of desolation to the ensuing Andante sostenuto. Her exemplary partnership with Markus Becker reaps equally enthralling musical rewards in the other works.
April 2011
she surfs the waves of Schulhoff's sparkling imagination with the deftest of touches...turn[ing] some of the most unpredictable and challenging violin works of the early 20th century into musical morsels of supreme naturalness.
March 2011
Tanja Becker-Bender can muster both impressively full tone and a not inappropriate astringent edge
March 2011
There is some challenging music here for both players and it receives performances of the highest quality, as though this music were at the very centre of the standard repertoire instead of well beyond its fringes. Tanja Becker-Bender's tonal palette is wide, not shying away in the least from the occasional healthy dig into the strings; she seems totally at home with the material
10th February 2011
The performances are first-rate. Tanja Becker-Bender is the assertive, often spectacular violinist. Pianist Markus Becker does fine things with accompaniments that can sometimes seem ungrateful and predominantly supportive.
