Reger: Violin Concerto in A / Two Romances

"it's one of [Reger's] most heart-warming works, allowing his intensely lyrical streak free rein...Aided by first-rate orchestral playing, [Zagrosek] finds transparency in Reger's original...Chief honours, of course, go to Tanja Becker-Bender: she not only shows stamina (the violin is seldom silent), but also technical command, beauty of tone and clear sympathetic identification with the music."
(BBC Music Five Stars)

"I have been a Reger admirer for most of my adult life, but I have not heard a performance of his Violin Concerto which has excited or moved me as much as this one. It is a remarkable achievement on the part of this young violinist...This is a truly outstanding CD of very fine music, excellently performed and recorded."
(International Record Review)

"Tanja Becker-Bender is more than equal to the demands of the solo part, and Lothar Zagrosek's masterly articulation of Reger's Klangstrom ('stream of sound'), in all its transparency and modulated colour and variety of incident is, if anything, an even more distinguished contribution."
(Gramophone)

Reger is one of those composers more talked about than listened to-caricatured as a prolific writer of organ music with a penchant for dense musical textures. But he certainly wasn't averse to a good tune: the two Romances abound in lush lyricism, while the magnificent A major Violin Concerto shows him continuing in the tradition of the violin concertos of Beethoven and Brahms. An unashamedly symphonic work, it's nearly an hour long-around the same length as the nearly-contemporary Elgar Violin Concerto. No less a figure than Adolf Busch championed it-first performing it when he was just sixteen.

The young German violinist Tanja Becker-Bender, who has already made such an impact in Schulhoff and Paganini, is joined by Lothar Zagrosek and the Berlin Konzerthausorchester for this 11th volume in the Romantic Violin Concerto series-a series that is triumphantly demonstrating how much great music there is out there just waiting to be rediscovered.