Violin Sonatas Nos, 1, 2, Suite, Solo Violin Sonata : Becker-Bender(Vn)M.Becker(P)

Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) : Violin Sonatas

Suite for violin and piano, WV18
Sonata No 1 for violin and piano, WV24
Sonata for solo violin, WV83
Sonata No 2 for violin and piano, WV91

Tanja Becker-Bender, violin
Markus Becker, piano

Recording details: April 2010, Beethovensaal, Hannover, Germany
Produced by Ludger Bockenhoff
Engineered by Ludger Bockenhoff

The German violinist Tanja Becker-Bender burst onto the recording scene with a dazzling set of Paganini’s Caprices which thrilled the critics. She appears here in a second disc for Hyperion with her compatriot, Markus Becker, who has made two acclaimed recordings for the label.

Erwin Schulhoff: jazz enthusiast, sometime Dadaist, surrealist and committed communist. These are some of the labels that spring to mind for this extraordinary figure, but Schulhoff was a more complex and wide-ranging musician than any neat tags suggest. This Prague-born prodigy had an intensive training rooted in the Austro-German tradition from before the age of ten, and later studied with Max Reger and Fritz Steinbacher. His music is impossible to pin down stylistically - even at a particular stage of his career. His music for violin is often outrageously virtuosic and never less than fascinating. ( Hyperion )