With a title like Time & Eternity and graphics featuring the disembodied head of violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, you know you're in for an ambitious program. Kopatchinskaja's albums have been getting increasingly experimental as her career has developed, and this one is at no time boring, whatever you may think of the overall concept. Sample Crux, by Lubos Fiser, for violin, timpani, and bells, with the timpani pounding away as a kind of avatar of dread. This said the structure of the program is not quite as ...
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With a title like Time & Eternity and graphics featuring the disembodied head of violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, you know you're in for an ambitious program. Kopatchinskaja's albums have been getting increasingly experimental as her career has developed, and this one is at no time boring, whatever you may think of the overall concept. Sample Crux, by Lubos Fiser, for violin, timpani, and bells, with the timpani pounding away as a kind of avatar of dread. This said the structure of the program is not quite as unconventional as it may at first appear to be. It's organized around two central works: the Concerto funebre of anti-Nazi composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann, and the Polyptyque for violin and two small string orchestras of Frank Martin; the latter work is interspersed with chorales from Bach's Johannes-Passion, BWV 245. Elsewhere, there are shorter works that all contribute to the album's existential themes in one way or another. Some are for violin, but there are also vocal pieces, including short...
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