Von Gemmingen / Lessin / Muenchner Rundfunkorch - Ernst von Gemmingen: Violin Concertos Nos. 3 & 4 [CD]

At long last CPO is now releasing Ernst von Gemmingen's Violin Concertos Nos. 3 and 4 as world-premiere recordings, again interpreted by one of the most versatile musicians of our times: Kolja Lessing, who both as a violinist and a pianist has lent strong impulses to music culture with his interpretive and musicological insights. CPO also has him to thank for the exemplary interpretation recorded here. In his booklet text he himself writes: "We as yet know only a little or almost nothing about the human being and artist Ernst von Gemmingen, whose extant music library, however, offers eloquent testimony to his select taste. An autodidact and a visionary, borne by a wealth of violinistic invention almost boundless for his times with respect to double-stop and bel-canto playing, no less in view of sophisticated figurations up to the highest registers, in his four broadly dimensioned violin concertos he created what practically amount to theatrical scenarios. The Violin Concertos Nos. 3 and 4 recorded here for the first time reveal these scenic qualities, paired with violinistic character and expressive eloquence surging far head into early romanticism - in even greater measure than in his first two concertos." A symphony by François-Joseph Gossec, Gemmingen's contemporary and the principal composer of the French Revolution, complements the two concertos.