A passionate performer and long time Chandos artist, Lydia Mordkovitch, here partnered by the pianist Ian Fountain, presents a rarely heard body of work by two Eastern European composers, the Polish Grazyna Bacewicz and the Romanian George Enescu. A recent recording of Bliss’s Violin Concerto led to such reviews for Lydia as ‘Mordkovitch responds with unflagging conviction and her customary no-holds-barred passion receives alert, warm-hearted support… an attractive and valuable coupling’ (Gramophone) and ‘Lydia Mordkovitch offers a fiery almost gypsy interpretation; very fetching, and not at all wrong. A rewarding release’ (The Times).
Bacewicz was the most prominent Polish female composer of the twentieth century and a renowned violinist who,by contemporary accounts, was surpassed only by Ginette Neveu and David Oistrakh. She left a legacy of over 200 compositions, many of which have never been heard in the West. The Partita was written after a long hospitalisation – the result of a serious automobile accident. Although Bacewicz’s body was immobilised, her musical mind must have been very active. She provided two versions of the work, one for orchestra and the second for violin and piano which we hear on this recording. Bacewicz’s Third Violin Sonata is one of her lesser-known pieces. Bacewicz is frequently labelled a neoclassicist, but she is much more robust and muscular in her approach than many of her contemporaries. George Enescu was a prodigy as both performer and composer and was not yet eighteen when he completed the Second Violin Sonata. His world here is not Romanian, but rather influenced by Brahms, Franck and Fauré; however, the work still exudes a healthy respect for the tradition which he inherited. Both Bacewicz and Enescu studied in Paris, and were professional violinists and pianists who imbued their music with a profound knowledge of their instruments, clearly demonstrated in this new recording.

LYDIA MORDKOVITCH PLAYS RUSSIAN WORKS FOR VIOLIN / VIOLA:

Lydia Mordkovitch performs a personal selection of Russian pieces for violin or viola. All of them display her expressive capacity and brilliant technique. There is a premiere recording of Volkonsky’s Sonata for Viola and Piano, and the collection offers as well the only available recordings of the Sonata for Solo Violin by Khandoshkin and Prokofiev’s Five Pieces from Cinderella. Lydia Mordkovitch performs on the ‘Kustendyke’ violin made by Antonio Stradivari in Cremona in 1699 and a viola made by C.F. Landolfi in Milan in 1760. Gramophone wrote of Lydia Mordkovitch’s recording of violin sonatas by Prokofiev and Shostakovich: ‘All the performances are big-hearted and well projected in the now familiar Mordkovitch manner.’ Lydia Mordkovitch is joined by the pianists Nicholas Walker and Julian Milford.