Ernst: Complete Works, Volume Six
Sherban Lupu (violin), Yvonne Redman (soprano), Ian Hobson (piano)
For those who esteem Ernst as Paganini squared, the performances of the violin music by Sherban Lupu, neither heavy handed nor agglutinated, should be irresistible. And for those to whom an...
Ernst: Complete Works, Volume Six
Sherban Lupu (violin), Yvonne Redman (soprano), Ian Hobson (piano)
Purchase product
For those who esteem Ernst as Paganini squared, the performances of the violin music by Sherban Lupu, neither heavy handed nor agglutinated, should be irresistible. And for those to whom an...
About
Sherban Lupu, born in 1952, is the leading Romanian violinist of his generation and was for decades, until his recent retirement from academic life, one of the most sought-after violin teachers in North America. For Toccata Classics he has recorded this complete recording of the works of Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst as well as music by Enescu and Grigoriu.
Ian Hobson, pianist and conductor, began his international career in 1981 when he won First Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition. He is in increasing demand as a conductor, particularly for performances in which he doubles as a pianist. He made his debut in this capacity in 1996 with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, and also performs extensively as pianist-conductor with Sinfonia da Camera, a group he formed in 1984 and which quickly gained international recognition through its recordings. He is half-way through a six-CD series conducting the early orchestral music of Bohuslav Martinu for Toccata Classics and a recording of Moszkowski’s symphonic poem Johanna d’Arc is imminent.
Yvonne Redman, professor of voice at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has a distinguished career on the operatic stages of the world, not least the Metropolitan Opera, where she appeared for eighteen consecutive seasons.
Contents and tracklist
- Sherban Lupu (violin)
- Yvonne Redman (soprano), Ian Hobson (piano)
- Yvonne Redman (soprano), Ian Hobson (piano)
- Sherban Lupu (violin)
Awards and reviews
January/February 2020
For those who esteem Ernst as Paganini squared, the performances of the violin music by Sherban Lupu, neither heavy handed nor agglutinated, should be irresistible. And for those to whom an evening of technical wizardry may not be so compelling without having the violinist in the room, the addition of the unknown, more intimate, Ernst, may be the very best kind of introduction to his oeuvre. Urgently recommended.
September 2019
Sherban Lupu is an adept practitioner of this repertoire as he has shown time and again in this series and he needs all his skill to surmount the voluminous technical demands of the music, to say nothing of inflecting and characterising the Polyphonic Studies – each dedicated to a violin luminary of the time (including Joachim, Vieuxtemps and Bazzini) – in a way that brings them alive.
4th August 2019
Here are first recordings of five piano pieces and two Goethe settings, but the framing main attractions are the six Etudes pour le violon à plusieurs parties and the Grand Caprice, for violin solo, on Schubert’s Erlking. The new sophistication to which Ernst brings double-stopping and single-violin polyphony is mesmerising.