Four Centuries of Great Music November 2, 2025 October Violin New Releases

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music I am sharing some of the new releases for the month of October.  There is a wide range of music that was released in October, but there were a particularly large number of albums of violin music.  So I thought I wold focus on those in this episode of Four Centuries of Great Music.

I will be opening with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77 was written in 1948 but on 10 February that year, while
Shostakovich was in the middle of composing the finale of his First Violin Concerto, he and a number of other distinguished composers were castigated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, them for “formalist distortions and anti-democratic tendencies”.  So although the Violin concerto was completed in March 1948, the Concerto had to join a long list of effectively banned music. It had its belated premiere in October 1955, with the soloist David Oistrakh for whom the piece had been written.

It is in 4 movements:
1. Nocturne: Moderato 
2. Scherzo: Allegro 
3. Passacaglia: Andante – Cadenza attacca 
4. Burlesque: Allegro con brio – Presto 

Here is a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich:  Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77 by HYEYOON PARK violin with GERGELY MADARAS conducting the WDR SINFONIEORCHESTER from the album Silenced: Shostakovich, Bosmans   Linn Records


The strangely subdued character of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 5 in F minor (BWV 1018) is primarily defined by its extended opening movement, which is marked “Lamento” in one of the handwritten sources. Supported by a rich contrapuntal texture in the accompanying harpsichord,
the violin unfolds a spacious cantilena that seldom relates to the motivic material developed by the harpsichord. The elegiac mood is interrupted by a furious Allegro only to return in the lyrical third movement marked Adagio. The sonata ends in a rhythmically intricate Vivace.


Sonata No. 5 in F minor, BWV 1018
10. I. Lamento       
11. II. Allegro      
12. III. Adagio    
13. IV. Vivace   

Here is a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach: Sonata No. 5 in F minor, BWV 1018 by Ilya Gringolts, violin and Francesco Corti, harpsichord from the album JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: SONATAS FOR VIOLIN AND HARPSICHORD. Outhere Music

01 - BIS-2787 - Bartók/ Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano - I. Allegro appassionato
02 - BIS-2787 - Bartók/ Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano - II. Adagio
03 - BIS-2787 - Bartók/ Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano - III. Allegro


Frank Peter Zimmermann violin 
Dmytro Choni piano
BARTÓK SONATAS NOS 1& 2 FOR VIOLIN & PIANO SZYMANOWSKI MYTHES    BIS Records

Robert Russell Bennett: Violin Concerto I. Allegro moderato
002 Chloe Hanslip Singapore Symphony Orchestra Andrew Litton - Bennett Violin Concerto II. Andante moderato
003 Chloe Hanslip Singapore Symphony Orchestra Andrew Litton - Bennett Violin Concerto III. Vivace 
004 Chloe Hanslip Singapore Symphony Orchestra Andrew Litton- Bennett Violin Concerto IV. Allegro non troppo

Chloe Hanslip Singapore Symphony Orchestra Andrew Litton 
Robert Russell Bennett: Violin Concerto, Hexapoda; Vernon Duke: Violin Concerto.  Chandos Records