...forthcoming from cpo:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/julius-roentgen-werke-fuer-violine-klavier-vol-1/hnum/1588291 (https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/julius-roentgen-werke-fuer-violine-klavier-vol-1/hnum/1588291)
This CD almost duplicates the contents of the Toccata CD from July 2014!
It's only ok to record standard repertoire over and over and over and over!
In any case, my suspicion is that this will trump the Toccata recording. The cpo soloist, Christoph Schickedanz, is a wonderful player.
Ah, but irrespective of whatever merits it may turn out to have, it certainly will not trump the Toccata disc for the quality of the notes in the CD booklet.
That's a major Toccata selling-point, admittedly - but I'll be buying the cpo release too because Schickedanz is such a magnificent violinist.
..and it turns out rather as I had expected. Christoph Schickedanz is wonderful - his tone is beautiful, his intonation spot-on and his handling of Röntgen's soaring lines in, for example, the Op.40 Violin Sonata, marvellously secure and lustrous. Although Atsuko Sahara (on Toccata) is a fine player, I don't find her tone or vibrato as attractive as Schickedanz's. A case, I'm afraid, of the excellent being the enemy of the good.
...mind you, I do harbour a considerable soft spot for the first recording of the Op.40 Sonata (made by Elisabeth Small with Alan Mandel on Premier Recordings) - mainly because it takes the piece rather more slowly. This gives the Sonata a more melancholy feel and the soaring lines absolutely take wing. However, Schickedanz is undoubtedly a better violinist and the recording is better focused.
Oh, how often one's critical faculties are scrambled by the memory of the first recording one heard..,