Itzhak Perlman - Wieniawski: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 (2015) [HDTracks]

Not only was Henryk Wieniawski one of the most brilliant violinists of the nineteenth century, he was also one of the first “modern” virtuosos not to limit his repertoire to his own works but to introduce audiences to music by such greats as Bach and Beethoven. Polish by birth, he was educated in Paris, studying the violin principally with Lambert Massart (Wieniawski won first prize in the violin at the age of eleven, making him the Conservatoire’s youngest-ever graduate) and composition with Hippolyte Collet. He was still only eighteen when he published his First Violin Concerto, which was a triumph at its premiere in Leipzig in 1853. He became renowned across Europe, admired for his dazzling artistry, both on the violin as a soloist and on the viola in chamber music — notably in concerts organised by the Beethoven Quartet Society while he was in London in 1859.
In 1860, Wieniawski travelled to Russia, where he was appointed solo violinist to the Tsar, first violin of the Russian Musical Society string quartet and, in 1862, professor of violin at the St Petersburg Conservatory. That same year, he gave the premiere of his Second Violin Concerto under the baton of Anton Rubinstein. While continuing to tour the world, he also accepted a new teaching post, succeeding Henri Vieuxtemps as professor at the Brussels Conservatory in 1874. Four years later, however, he suffered a heart attack during a concert in Berlin. His state of health continued to worsen and, while on tour in Russia, he was taken in by Tchaikovsky’s friend and patron Madame von Meck, dying at her home in Moscow on 31 March 1880 at the age of forty-four. Like Paganini, he later had an international violin competition named after him, the first edition of which was won in 1935 by Ginette Neveu, beating David Oistrakh into second place.
A fitting heir to Paganini, Wieniawski — along with Vieuxtemps and Sarasate — represents nineteenth-century violin virtuosity at its most flamboyant. While his Second Concerto, famous in particular for its central Romance, had been the subject of several memorable recordings before this one (in versions by Váša Prˇíhoda, Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Ida Haendel, Igor Oistrakh and Pinchas Zukerman), only a few performers, among their number Michael Rabin and Ivry Gitlis, had also recorded the First. Between his recordings of Paganini’s First Concerto and the Twenty-four Caprices, Perlman made his own contribution to the Wieniawski legacy by devoting one of his first EMI albums to the composer’s two concertos.