Janine Jansen: 12 Stradivari
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Label: Decca
Cat No: 4851605
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Chamber
Release Date: 10th September 2021
Contents
Works
Sospiri, op.70 (arr. violin and piano)La vida breve
» Danse espagnole no.1 (arr. Kreisler)
Roberta » Yesterdays
LiebesleidSyncopation
Cello Sonata in G minor, op.19
» III Andante
Piece en forme de Habanera (arr. Georges Catherine)Romances (3), op.22
» no.1 Andante molto
Fantasiestucke (3), op.73Piano Pieces (6), op.7
» no.1 Liebeslied (violin and piano)
Mythes (3), op.30 » I La fontaine d'Arethuse
Eugene Onegin, op.24 » Kuda, kuda 'Lensky's Aria' (arr. Leopold Auer for violin & piano)
Souvenir d'un lieu cher, op.42 » no.3 Melodie (arr. Leopold Auer)
Romances sans paroles (3), op.7 » no.2 in C minor 'Desespoir'
Artists
Janine Jansen (violin)Antonio Pappano (piano)
Works
Sospiri, op.70 (arr. violin and piano)La vida breve
» Danse espagnole no.1 (arr. Kreisler)
Roberta » Yesterdays
LiebesleidSyncopation
Cello Sonata in G minor, op.19
» III Andante
Piece en forme de Habanera (arr. Georges Catherine)Romances (3), op.22
» no.1 Andante molto
Fantasiestucke (3), op.73Piano Pieces (6), op.7
» no.1 Liebeslied (violin and piano)
Mythes (3), op.30 » I La fontaine d'Arethuse
Eugene Onegin, op.24 » Kuda, kuda 'Lensky's Aria' (arr. Leopold Auer for violin & piano)
Souvenir d'un lieu cher, op.42 » no.3 Melodie (arr. Leopold Auer)
Romances sans paroles (3), op.7 » no.2 in C minor 'Desespoir'
Artists
Janine Jansen (violin)Antonio Pappano (piano)
About
For the first time in history, twelve of the most wonderful violins ever made by the finest violin maker of all time, Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737), have travelled across the world for a ground-breaking new project with violin superstar Janine Jansen. The resulting album, 12 Stradivari, captures the individual characters of each instrument in specially-curated music accompanied by Sir Antonio Pappano at the piano.
These days Stradivari’s instruments can reach prices well over $20 million and some of the foundations and museums who own them let them out only on rare occasions. This is also why this recording is particularly special: some of these 12 Stradivari have not been played for many decades and, possibly, have never ben commercially recorded before. Others belonged to legendary virtuosi including Fritz Kreisler, Nathan Milstein, Ida Haendel and Oscar Shumsky. Janine herself is widely considered to be one of the greatest violinists of our time, and this album is her first release with Decca in 6 years.
The project was devised by Steven Smith, Managing Director of the world’s pre-eminent violin dealers, J & A Beare. Having worked with Stradivari instruments his entire career he wanted to bring 12 of the very best violins together to show their brilliance and also their differences. He also wanted to record for posterity their sounds in one single, unique record and approached Janine and Decca for the extraordinary challenge. Smith knew where in the world the 12 violins for this project were and who owned them. In spite of the numerous logistic challenges of aligning the schedules of all the owners and players at a time when travelling was at its most difficult, he was able to create a two-week-period when all violins could be flown to London.
Janine says: “When Steven Smith approached me about this project, I knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity! It was my chance to experience the magic of these famous instruments and to explore the differences between them, especially bearing in mind that some of them have not been played in many years. I was very fortunate to be able to share this experience with my wonderful collaborator Sir Antonio Pappano.”
This unique project is brilliantly captured through an unmissable documentary named Janine Jansen: Falling for Stradivari. The film follows Janine’s unrepeatable experience of discovering each instrument’s individual qualities and immense capabilities. Her working relationship with Sir Antonio Pappano reveals the astounding energy, dedication and abundance of creativity needed to conquer such a formidable challenge. Directed by BAFTA award-winning Gerry Fox, Falling for Stradivari will be premiered at Curzon cinemas in the UK in September, 2021.
Janine’s recording debut in 2003 achieved epic success within the initial rise of digital sales, and to date she has 850k units sold with Decca and over 106 million streams. She has won numerous prizes, including the Herbert-von-Karajan Preis 2020, the Vermeer Prize 2018 awarded by the Dutch government, five Edison Klassiek Awards, NDR Musikpreis for outstanding artistic achievement, the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award for performances in the UK and the Concertgebouw Prize to name just a few.
These days Stradivari’s instruments can reach prices well over $20 million and some of the foundations and museums who own them let them out only on rare occasions. This is also why this recording is particularly special: some of these 12 Stradivari have not been played for many decades and, possibly, have never ben commercially recorded before. Others belonged to legendary virtuosi including Fritz Kreisler, Nathan Milstein, Ida Haendel and Oscar Shumsky. Janine herself is widely considered to be one of the greatest violinists of our time, and this album is her first release with Decca in 6 years.
The project was devised by Steven Smith, Managing Director of the world’s pre-eminent violin dealers, J & A Beare. Having worked with Stradivari instruments his entire career he wanted to bring 12 of the very best violins together to show their brilliance and also their differences. He also wanted to record for posterity their sounds in one single, unique record and approached Janine and Decca for the extraordinary challenge. Smith knew where in the world the 12 violins for this project were and who owned them. In spite of the numerous logistic challenges of aligning the schedules of all the owners and players at a time when travelling was at its most difficult, he was able to create a two-week-period when all violins could be flown to London.
Janine says: “When Steven Smith approached me about this project, I knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity! It was my chance to experience the magic of these famous instruments and to explore the differences between them, especially bearing in mind that some of them have not been played in many years. I was very fortunate to be able to share this experience with my wonderful collaborator Sir Antonio Pappano.”
This unique project is brilliantly captured through an unmissable documentary named Janine Jansen: Falling for Stradivari. The film follows Janine’s unrepeatable experience of discovering each instrument’s individual qualities and immense capabilities. Her working relationship with Sir Antonio Pappano reveals the astounding energy, dedication and abundance of creativity needed to conquer such a formidable challenge. Directed by BAFTA award-winning Gerry Fox, Falling for Stradivari will be premiered at Curzon cinemas in the UK in September, 2021.
Janine’s recording debut in 2003 achieved epic success within the initial rise of digital sales, and to date she has 850k units sold with Decca and over 106 million streams. She has won numerous prizes, including the Herbert-von-Karajan Preis 2020, the Vermeer Prize 2018 awarded by the Dutch government, five Edison Klassiek Awards, NDR Musikpreis for outstanding artistic achievement, the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award for performances in the UK and the Concertgebouw Prize to name just a few.
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Falla - La vida breve - Danse Espagnole
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2Suk - 6 Pieces op.7 - 1. Love Song (arr. Kocian for violin and piano)
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3C Schumann - 3 Romances op.22 - 1. Andante molto
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4R Schumann - Fantasiestucke op.73 - 1. Zart und mit Ausdruck
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5Vieuxtemps - 3 Romances sans paroles op.7 - 2. Desespoir
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6Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegein - Lensky's Aria (arr. Auer for violin and piano)
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7Szymanowski - Mythes op.30 - 1. La fontaine d'Arethuse
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8Ravel - Piece en forme en Habanera (arr. Catherine for violin and piano)
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9Elgar - Sospiri (arr. violin and piano)
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10Rachmaninov - Cello Sonata in G minor op.19 - 3. Andante (arr. violin and piano)
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11Tchaikovsky - Souvenir d'un lieu cher op.42 - 3. Melodie
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12Heuberger - Der Opernball - Midnight Bells (arr. Kreisler for violin and piano)
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13Kreisler - Syncopation
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14Kreisler - Liebeslied
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15Kern - Roberta - Yesterdays (arr. violin and piano)
Europadisc Review
This jaw-droppingly fabulous new disc from Janine Jansen is a labour of love, not only on the part of the Dutch violinist herself and her accompanist (the ever-sympathetic Antonio Pappano), but also on the part of London-based violin dealers J & A Beare. They appear to have moved heaven and earth to bring together, for a brief two-week period in late-autumn 2020, twelve of the most outstanding violins made by the great Cremonan luthier Antonio Stradivari (1644–1737). It would be an impressive enough feat even in ‘normal’ times, but must have posed extra challenges amid a global pandemic. One of the violins (the 1718 ‘San Lorenzo’) was flown over to London from Japan on the day the UK closed its borders, with Nippon Violin president Sota Nakazawa and his charge being the only passengers on the flight! Of course, the fact that much music-making had been curtailed by the health crisis may have made the logistics slightly easier in some respects, but you still have to admire the sheer determination of Beare’s managing director Steven Smith in pulling off this once-in-a-lifetime feat.
The background to the album has already been presented in a fascinating documentary film Falling for Stradivari that showed in selected cinemas in early September, but the results themselves on this Decca recording are no less spectacular. The instruments featured on the disc represent the broad range of Stradivari’s output, with a generous selection from his so-called ‘Golden Years’ (1700–25), but also examples from his early and late oeuvre. Jansen throws herself into the music, harnessing the rich facets of these remarkable instruments, and partnered with appropriate panache and sensitivity by Pappano.
Stradivari was apprenticed to Nicola Amati in his early teens, and the earliest examples of his art date from the mid-1660s. As his reputation grew, his violins – noted especially for their richness and power – were sought out by the greatest musicians and collectors, and today change hands for often astronomical sums. Of the estimated 960 violins he produced in his lifetime (to say nothing of the violas, cellos, guitars, harps and mandolins), around 500 survive today, many in museums, owned by banks and other corporations, or private collectors. The examples on this disc range from the c.1680 ‘Captain Savile’ and a c.1699 violin formerly played by the late Ida Haendel, to a pair of instruments from 1733 and 1734 once owned by Fritz Kreisler. Jansen’s own instrument, the 1715 ‘Duke of Cambridge’ formerly played by Pierre Rode, Leopold Auer and Oscar Shumsky, is heard, as well as the 1716 ‘Milstein ex Goldman’, once the property of the great Nathan Milstein.
Jansen and Pappano between them have put together a splendidly balanced programme to showcase these instruments, ranging from ‘high’ art music by Clara and Robert Schumann and Karol Szymanowski, to arrangements and encore-style works by Kreisler, Tchaikovsky (arranged by Auer), Ravel, and even Jerome Kern. The disc opens with an ear-grabbing account of the Danse espagnole from de Falla’s opera La vida breve, arranged by Kreisler: it is played on Kreisler’s own 1734 ‘Lord Amherst’, and belies the popular notion that Stradivari’s later instruments witnessed a decline in standards, with powerful tone and Jansen’s bow ricocheting off the strings in dazzling style. By contrast, the 1715 ‘Alard’ has a more focused, ‘grainy’ sound which well-suits the ‘Love Song’ from Josef Suk’s Six Piano Pieces, op.7 (arranged by Jaroslav Kocián).
The 1718 ‘San Lorenzo’ has a gorgeously silky, focused tone that seems tailor-made for the first of Clara Schumann’s Three Romances, op.22, while the sinewy early ‘Captain Savile’ shows no lack of warmth or expressive finesse in the first of Robert Schumann’s three Fantasiestücke, op.73 (originally for clarinet or cello). With Henri Vieuxtemps’s Désespoir we enter classic virtuoso repertoire, and his own 1710 instrument played here shows great penetrative power. For Lensky’s Aria from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (arr. Auer) Jansen uses her own loaned Shumsky-Rode, once played by Auer himself: pliant, powerful and with great richness of tone even when whispered, you can tell that Jansen is completely at home on this violin.
For ‘La Fontaine d’Aréthuse’ from Szymanowski’s Mythes, the c.1699 Haendel instrument has a penetrating edginess about it, with distinct upper partials, ideal for this beguilingly impressionistic music, with its evocative sul ponticello and tremolo passages. The 1722 ‘De Chaponay’ heard in Georges Catherine’s arrangement of Ravel’s Vocalise-étude en forme de habanera is similarly capable of a great variety of tone, ranging from forthright and edgy to suggestively whispered in Jansen’s exceptionally vivid account. The softly-grained sound produced from the 1717 ‘Tyrrell’, with its wistful overtones, aptly suggests the sighing of Elgar’s Sospiri, with Jansen employing an exceptionally wide dynamic range.
In a violin version of the Andante from Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata, the 1716 ‘Milstein ex Goldman’ has a slightly harder tone, focused yet still wonderfully expressive and pliant. By contrast, the 1715 ‘Titian’ used for the ‘Mélodie’ from Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher (another Auer arrangement) is rather warmer but with no loss of focus, its sound redolent of the ‘golden age’ of interwar and immediately post-war violin playing. The 1733 Huberman-Kreisler heard in Kreisler’s arrangement of ‘Midnight Bells’ from Richard Heuberger’s Der Opernball (teasingly inflected by Jansen and Pappano) is big-toned and wide-ranging – further evidence of Kreisler’s preference for the generous tone of these late-period Stradivari instruments.
The closing trio of encores – Kreisler’s Syncopation and Liebesleid, plus Pappano’s own marvellously atmospheric arrangement of ‘Yesterdays’ from the Kern-Harbach musical Roberta – bring back the two Kreisler instruments and (finally) the Shumsky-Rode, three of the most outstanding examples from this consistently engrossing and exceptionally well-planned selection. As notable for its superb musicianship as for its triumph of organisational logistics, this is a recording that will surely be snapped up by all aficionados of string playing. Listened to at a good level, all sorts of nuanced differences between the instruments are detectable to those with keen ears, while the music itself is a succession of delights, infectiously conveyed by both musicians. A feast for the ears and a triumph for all concerned!
The background to the album has already been presented in a fascinating documentary film Falling for Stradivari that showed in selected cinemas in early September, but the results themselves on this Decca recording are no less spectacular. The instruments featured on the disc represent the broad range of Stradivari’s output, with a generous selection from his so-called ‘Golden Years’ (1700–25), but also examples from his early and late oeuvre. Jansen throws herself into the music, harnessing the rich facets of these remarkable instruments, and partnered with appropriate panache and sensitivity by Pappano.
Stradivari was apprenticed to Nicola Amati in his early teens, and the earliest examples of his art date from the mid-1660s. As his reputation grew, his violins – noted especially for their richness and power – were sought out by the greatest musicians and collectors, and today change hands for often astronomical sums. Of the estimated 960 violins he produced in his lifetime (to say nothing of the violas, cellos, guitars, harps and mandolins), around 500 survive today, many in museums, owned by banks and other corporations, or private collectors. The examples on this disc range from the c.1680 ‘Captain Savile’ and a c.1699 violin formerly played by the late Ida Haendel, to a pair of instruments from 1733 and 1734 once owned by Fritz Kreisler. Jansen’s own instrument, the 1715 ‘Duke of Cambridge’ formerly played by Pierre Rode, Leopold Auer and Oscar Shumsky, is heard, as well as the 1716 ‘Milstein ex Goldman’, once the property of the great Nathan Milstein.
Jansen and Pappano between them have put together a splendidly balanced programme to showcase these instruments, ranging from ‘high’ art music by Clara and Robert Schumann and Karol Szymanowski, to arrangements and encore-style works by Kreisler, Tchaikovsky (arranged by Auer), Ravel, and even Jerome Kern. The disc opens with an ear-grabbing account of the Danse espagnole from de Falla’s opera La vida breve, arranged by Kreisler: it is played on Kreisler’s own 1734 ‘Lord Amherst’, and belies the popular notion that Stradivari’s later instruments witnessed a decline in standards, with powerful tone and Jansen’s bow ricocheting off the strings in dazzling style. By contrast, the 1715 ‘Alard’ has a more focused, ‘grainy’ sound which well-suits the ‘Love Song’ from Josef Suk’s Six Piano Pieces, op.7 (arranged by Jaroslav Kocián).
The 1718 ‘San Lorenzo’ has a gorgeously silky, focused tone that seems tailor-made for the first of Clara Schumann’s Three Romances, op.22, while the sinewy early ‘Captain Savile’ shows no lack of warmth or expressive finesse in the first of Robert Schumann’s three Fantasiestücke, op.73 (originally for clarinet or cello). With Henri Vieuxtemps’s Désespoir we enter classic virtuoso repertoire, and his own 1710 instrument played here shows great penetrative power. For Lensky’s Aria from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (arr. Auer) Jansen uses her own loaned Shumsky-Rode, once played by Auer himself: pliant, powerful and with great richness of tone even when whispered, you can tell that Jansen is completely at home on this violin.
For ‘La Fontaine d’Aréthuse’ from Szymanowski’s Mythes, the c.1699 Haendel instrument has a penetrating edginess about it, with distinct upper partials, ideal for this beguilingly impressionistic music, with its evocative sul ponticello and tremolo passages. The 1722 ‘De Chaponay’ heard in Georges Catherine’s arrangement of Ravel’s Vocalise-étude en forme de habanera is similarly capable of a great variety of tone, ranging from forthright and edgy to suggestively whispered in Jansen’s exceptionally vivid account. The softly-grained sound produced from the 1717 ‘Tyrrell’, with its wistful overtones, aptly suggests the sighing of Elgar’s Sospiri, with Jansen employing an exceptionally wide dynamic range.
In a violin version of the Andante from Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata, the 1716 ‘Milstein ex Goldman’ has a slightly harder tone, focused yet still wonderfully expressive and pliant. By contrast, the 1715 ‘Titian’ used for the ‘Mélodie’ from Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher (another Auer arrangement) is rather warmer but with no loss of focus, its sound redolent of the ‘golden age’ of interwar and immediately post-war violin playing. The 1733 Huberman-Kreisler heard in Kreisler’s arrangement of ‘Midnight Bells’ from Richard Heuberger’s Der Opernball (teasingly inflected by Jansen and Pappano) is big-toned and wide-ranging – further evidence of Kreisler’s preference for the generous tone of these late-period Stradivari instruments.
The closing trio of encores – Kreisler’s Syncopation and Liebesleid, plus Pappano’s own marvellously atmospheric arrangement of ‘Yesterdays’ from the Kern-Harbach musical Roberta – bring back the two Kreisler instruments and (finally) the Shumsky-Rode, three of the most outstanding examples from this consistently engrossing and exceptionally well-planned selection. As notable for its superb musicianship as for its triumph of organisational logistics, this is a recording that will surely be snapped up by all aficionados of string playing. Listened to at a good level, all sorts of nuanced differences between the instruments are detectable to those with keen ears, while the music itself is a succession of delights, infectiously conveyed by both musicians. A feast for the ears and a triumph for all concerned!
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