The Works for Violin & Orchestra

Even if Christian Sinding today continues to be known by name in Germany only for his piano piece Frühlingsrauschen (though perhaps a few of you are also familiar with the wonderful cpo recordings of his symphonies!), he nevertheless numbers among the few Norwegian composers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who also gained renown with their music outside their native country. Unlike Edvard Grieg, after his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory Sinding did not espouse folk music and its characteristic idioms in order to distance himself from the classical tradition that had been imparted to him; instead, during his Munich stay, he turned to the »New German style« and the musical language of Richard Wagner. The composer maintained a special interest in the violin throughout his life, with his three major concertos and four shorter concert pieces attesting to his fact. These highly romantic and virtuosic concert compositions find a congenial soloist in the young Andrej Bielow.