JANINE JANSEN RETURNS WITH HER FIRST NEW CONCERTO RECORDINGS IN 9 YEARS
WITH SIBELIUS AND PROKOFIEV VIOLIN CONCERTOS
LISTEN TO "Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No1 in D Major, Op. 19: I. Andantino" HERE
RELEASE DATE: 7 JUNE
26 APRIL 2024 (TORONTO, ON) - Decca is delighted to announce Janine Jansen's new album, featuring violin concertos by Sibelius and Prokofiev, with Janine as the soloist in both works. These are her first new concerto recordings in nine years.
Dutch violinist Jansen is a musician of poise, sensitivity and elegance who regularly visits the world’s most esteemed orchestras and concert halls. Joining her on the album is Finnish conductor, Klaus Mäkelä, and the Oslo Philharmonic. Mäkelä’s Decca recorded cycle of the complete symphonies of his compatriot Sibelius with Norway’s flagship orchestra was described by BBC Music Magazine as "the most electrifying and often revelatory of them all."
Sibelius’s Violin Concerto No.1 is coloured differently from its counterparts in the Romantic literature. Its combination of fire and ice - of display countered by introversion - is a facet of the score Jansen has always made her own. Her performances of the work, with Mäkelä in 2023, were widely acclaimed by European critics.
In addition to Sibelius’s work, Jansen includes one of the major violin concertos of the twentieth century. Unbounded lyricism is pitted against destructive, forceful cynicism in the first of Serge Prokofiev’s concertos, a work in which Jansen has put her formidable technique in service of the work’s savagery and intimacy.
Prokofiev was in love when he wrote the concerto, which moves from an opening melody played ‘as if in a dream’ through various trials and tribulations before soaring upwards in rapture and serenity.
“What leaps out is the sheer quality, consistency and stylishness of Janine Jansen’s playing.” - Gramophone on 12 Stradivari (2021)
“Jansen and Mäkelä recorded [Sibelius’s] concerto together last summer…it promises to be a true reference, based on what was heard in Oslo.” - Platea (concert review, 2023)
“Mäkelä’s cycle is all of a piece, accomplished, insightful and full of the beauty and intrigue that make these works so perennially exciting” - Gramophone on Sibelius: Complete Symphonies (2022)
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