Britten & Korngold: Violin Concertos

Vilde Frang (violin)
Frankfurt Radio Symphony, James Gaffigan

*German ECHO Klassik Award 2016 “Concert Recording (20th/21st century music)”
*Concerto Award, 2016 Gramaphone Classical Music Awards

Both concertos on this new disc were written when their composers were in the USA around the time of World War II: the Korngold was completed in 1945, the Britten in 1939. In the course of the 1930s Korngold, an Austrian Jew, had become a prominent Hollywood composer, but could not return to his homeland after 1938; the young Britten, a pacifist, left the UK for New York shortly before the declaration of war in 1939. Both composers had been child prodigies and both concertos are centred around the key of D, the most ‘natural’ key on the violin and the tonal focus for the violin concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky. [text from Presto Classical]