Violin Concerto

Violinist Isabelle Faust is featured on a disc of German violin concertos that marks the début recording for harmonia mundi by the great Italian conductor Claudio Abbado. Abbado is the artistic director and principal conductor of Orchestra Mozart, an ensemble based in Bologna. They team up here for Berg s haunting Violin Concerto, subtitled To the Memory of an Angel. The work is dedicated to the memory of 18-year-old Manon Gropius, daughter of Alma Mahler, who died of polio in 1935. The pairing is Beethoven s immortal Violin Concerto, a work of rare beauty that, surprisingly, was not a success at its first performance. It was an 1844 concert featuring Joseph Joachim and Felix Mendelssohn, well after Beethoven s death, which revived the work and made it a permanent and beloved part of the violin repertoire.