BRUCH & KORNGOLD

Celebrated for her singing tone, exceptional technique, and deeply expressive musicianship, violinist Bomsori returns to Deutsche Grammophon with her eagerly awaited second solo album. Bruch & Korngold highlights her lyrical artistry and emotional depth through two masterpieces for violin and orchestra – Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto. With her radiant sound, natural phrasing, and virtuosity, Bomsori brings a uniquely personal voice to these beloved works.

Furthermore, these recordings of the concertos and two shorter pieces by Korngold capture the remarkable chemistry that sprang up between the violinist, the Bamberger Symphoniker and its Chief Conductor Jakub Hrůša over three days of recording in Bamberg’s Joseph-Keilberth-Saal. Bomsori also performs two numbers from Korngold’s musical comedy Die stumme Serenade in which she is accompanied by pianist Thomas Hoppe.

The album opens with that work, a cornerstone of Romantic violin music. Bomsori’s gift for sustained musical lines brings out the beauty in Bruch’s sweeping melodies. In the concerto’s famous Finale, her playing is both dance-like and lyrical, enhanced by nuanced and powerful support from Hrůša and the Bamberger Symphoniker.

After the Bruch, Bomsori delves into Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D major, a work that blends Romanticism with the colourful soundworld of the composer’s Hollywood film scores. Composed in 1945, during Korngold’s exile from Nazi-occupied Austria, the concerto incorporates themes from several of his movie soundtracks, including Anthony Adverse (1936) and Another Dawn (1937). It showcases Korngold’s gift for melodic richness, and makes considerable virtuosic demands on the soloist, masterfully handled by Bomsori.

The album is rounded off by a selection of excerpts from Korngold’s operatic and theatrical works. As well as the slow, flowing “Garden Scene” from Much Ado About Nothing, Bomsori and the orchestra play an arrangement of the well-known “Marietta’s Lied” from the opera Die tote Stadt. The violinist is then joined by Thomas Hoppe in “Ohne dich” and “Schönste Nacht” from Die stumme Serenade, both transcribed for violin and piano.