Schulhoff: Violin Sonatas

"Tanja Becker-Benda offers absolutely stunning playing throughout this warmly recorded disc. She makes light work of the formidable technical challenges in the opening Allegro con fuoco of the Solo Sonata and brings an unexpected sense of desolation to the ensuing Andante sostenuto. Her exemplary partnership with Markus Becker reaps equally enthralling musical rewards in the other works."
(BBC Music Disc of the Month March 2011)

"The dynamic swings and responsiveness to Schulhoff's vivid and ceaselessly lively inventiveness are done to a higher degree of intensity in this recording, another layer peeled from the gauze of history and a greater depths and insights into and beyond the notes gained and to be relished. Presented chronologically, the impact of the Sonata No.2 is gritty and demanding: a yet further development on the folk influences which arise in the finale of the solo Sonata, and an entire river full of stepping-stones away from the youthful works with which we started. Tanja Becker-Bender and Markus Bender's synergy as a duo is superb and the overall results on such a stunning recording - including the inspired use of Paul Klee for the cover art - can only be reported in superlatives."
(Recording of the Month MusicWeb March 2011)

"The performances are first-rate. Tanja Becker-Bender is the assertive, often spectacular violinist. Pianist Markus Becker does fine things with accompaniments that can sometimes seem ungrateful and predominantly supportive."
(The Guardian)

"Tanja Becker-Bender can muster both impressively full tone and a not inappropriate astringent edge"
(The Gramophone)

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.