The young Swiss violinist David Nebel recorded under the direction of Kristjan Järvi exceptional works by two of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century: The rarely recorded Violin Concerto No.1 by American minimalist composer Philip Glass and Igor Stravinsky's neoclassical Violin Concerto in D.

When Glass (*1937) was a boy, the first instrument of his own that he had was a violin. However, Glass did not write his Violin Concerto No. 1 until his fiftieth year. It was his very first large-scale orchestral work, premiered in New York City on 5 April 1987. Glass composed the work for his father Ben Glass, as a piece that he thought his father might have liked had he lived to be able to hear it. The piece quickly became very popular with its exclamatory and exciting first movement, a sumptuous and brilliantly patient second movement and a thrilling third movement with perhaps the most captivating coda that Glass has ever written.

The Violin Concerto in D with four movements instead of the usual three was composed in Stravinsky’s (1882–1971) Neoclassical period in 1931. In this work Stravinsky explored the forms of Baroque music, especially the concerto grosso principle, and gave solo passages to the orchestral musicians in many places, where individual instruments are involved in charming dialogues with the solo violin.

Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto was recorded with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic, and Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Violin Concertos