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Haydn Hummel: Double Concertos for Violin and Piano
"Haydn Hummel: Double Concertos for Violin and Piano "
Violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv’s new album with pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi, conductor Theodore Kuchar, and Slovak National Symphony Orchestra
Released April 17, 2020 on Centaur Records
The violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv, praised for her “superlative and consummate artistry” (Fanfare) teams up once again with pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi and the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, Theodore Kuchar conducting, for an album of double concertos by Haydn and Hummel. Released by Centaur Records (CRC3742).
This CD features two fine examples of classical-era double concertos: Franz Josef Haydn's Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Strings in F major and Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Orchestra in G major. The modern view of the concerto genre is dominated by the great nineteenth and twentieth-century staples that showcase a single soloist, but from the invention of the concerto in the late seventeenth century until some way into the 1800s, composers frequently wrote for different combinations of multiple soloists. The two works on this disc remind us of the fruitful possibilities afforded by the double concerto medium.
Haydn's Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Strings in F major, Hob. XVIII:6, dates from 1766, when the composer was in his mid-thirties. In 1761 he had been appointed Vice-Kapellmeister to the wealthy and musical Esterházy family, where he would remain for the rest of his professional life. It was a prestigious position, which gave him the opportunity to work with a community of virtuoso musicians. As is typical for eighteenth-century concertos, the work is in three movements, fast-slow-fast, the expansive first two movements capped by a much shorter finale that punches above its weight with sheer energy and rhythmic zest.
A protégé of Mozart and later Haydn, pianistic rival and then friend of Beethoven, Johann Nepomuk Hummel went on to become the most influential piano pedagogue of the first half of the nineteenth century. A number of later nineteenth-century composers were influenced almost as much by Hummel as by the giants of the classical period: he had a major impact on the piano writing of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Chopin, among others. Hummel wrote almost a dozen concertos across his career - the Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Orchestra in G major, Op. 17, composed c. 1805, was his third concerto but the first to which he assigned an opus number.
This is the second CD in a series of three recordings for violin and orchestra by Solomiya Ivakhiv. The first CD of the series, "Mendelssohn Concertos", (Brilliant Classics 95733, released Nov. 2019) features two rarely-heard, early Mendelssohn gems: the Concerto in D minor for Violin and Strings, and the Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra. “…Ivakhiv, along with Antonio Pompa-Baldi on keys and Theodore Kuchar conducting the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, interpret the classics sublimely with their respective talents,” says Take Effect Reviews.
The third recording, "Poems and Rhapsodies", will be released late in 2020 on the Centaur label. The featured work on the album is American Rhapsody for violin and orchestra by the Grammy-winning American composer Kenneth Fuchs. The album also features The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams, Poème Symphonique by Ernest Chausson and works by Camille Saint-Saëns, Myroslav Skoryk and Anatol Kos-Anatolsky. Performers include cellist Sophie Shao and the National Symphony Of Ukraine led by Volodymyr Sirenko.
Violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv (so-low-MEE-ya ee-VA-keev) has earned a reputation for performing with “distinctive charm and subtle profundity” (Daily Freeman, New York) and a “crystal clear and noble sound” (Culture and Life, Ukraine). Known for her work as a soloist and chamber musician, Solomiya Ivakhiv has performed in prestigious venues from Carnegie Hall in New York to Tchaikovsky Hall in Kyiv, and many places in between. She has appeared as soloist with orchestras including the Istanbul State Symphony, Charleston Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, and the Hunan Symphony Orchestra in China, among others, and has been a featured chamber performer at festivals from Tanglewood to Verbier.
Ms. Ivakhiv is Artistic Director of Music at the Institute (MATI) at the Ukranian Institute of America in New York City since 2010. Her debut solo album, "Ukraine: Journey to Freedom – A Century of Classical Music for Violin and Piano", with pianist Angelina Gadeliya, (Labor Records, released Feb. 2016) was featured in the Top 5 New Classical Releases on the iTunes billboard.
Ms. Ivakhiv is Assistant Professor of Violin and Viola and Head of Strings at the University of Connecticut and Professor of Violin at Longy School of Music of Bard College. She graduated with honors from Curtis Institute of Music, and studied with Joseph Silverstein, Pamela Frank and the late Rafael Druian. She received her Master of Music degree from M. Lysenko Music Academy in Lviv, Ukraine, studying with Oresta Kohut, and holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University, where she studied with Pamela Frank and Philip Setzer.
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