In addition to his position with the turn-of-the-millennium model of the Beaux Arts Trio, South African violinist Daniel Hope has also cultivated a solo recording career. After a half-dozen discs released on AVS and Nimbus, Hope hit the big time as a soloist when he signed with Warner Classics and made his major-label debut in a wholly convincing coupling of Britten's exciting Violin Concerto with Berg's excruciating Violin Concerto accompanied by Paul Watkins leading the BBC Symphony. This 2006 disc coupling both ...
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In addition to his position with the turn-of-the-millennium model of the Beaux Arts Trio, South African violinist Daniel Hope has also cultivated a solo recording career. After a half-dozen discs released on AVS and Nimbus, Hope hit the big time as a soloist when he signed with Warner Classics and made his major-label debut in a wholly convincing coupling of Britten's exciting Violin Concerto with Berg's excruciating Violin Concerto accompanied by Paul Watkins leading the BBC Symphony. This 2006 disc coupling both Shostakovich's violin concertos is almost but not quite as convincing. Hope remains a superb player with an aggressive attack, a powerful tone, and an amazing technique, but his interpretations here don't measure up to the great performances of the past. He can surely hold his own with the best of his contemporaries' recordings of the works -- the muscular Vadim Repin and the emotional Maxim Vengerov have nothing on Hope in the super-virtuoso department -- but compared with Leonid Kogen's...
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