Tomorrow, Friday 23rd April, violinist Benjamin Baker’s new album with pianist Daniel Lebarhdt on Delphian Records is being released worldwide! The album will be available on streaming services and as a physical CD.
Benjamin gave a wonderful performance of the violin concerto on the first CD of Ina Boyle's orchestral music, which was so important in Ina's revival.
If you would like a sneak peak right now, click below for a movement of Poulenc that has been released as a single on Spotify!
"1942" features three violin sonatas that have been a significant part of our partnership in the last few years, and were written on three different continents during that troubling year in world history.
While the drama of world events in the 1930s & 40s was part of our initial curiosity in these works, the circumstances in which Copland, Poulenc and Prokofiev experienced these events were very different from each other. Andrew Mellor sets the scene beautifully in a paragraph from his sleeve notes for the disc:
“Through it all, men and women fought and died. Families struggled, criminals schemed...and composers composed. Some carried images of all this accumulated violence and loss into their music. Others, whether through instruction or inclination, did not. . . . For Copland and Pouelnc, the war was coloured by personal loss, with national humiliation thrown in for the latter. For an evacuated Prokofiev, the war brought greater expressive freedoms and the perfect conditions for creativity.”
To pre-add the album on streaming services or pre-order a CD from Presto Classical, click below. Alternatively, you can click here for Delphian Records' online store.