Eroica Rupert Marshall-Luck

• Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1875 - 1940): Sonata eroica for solo violin, op.29:
• 1Tovey: Sonata eroica for solo violin, op.29: Maestoso e sostenuto, quasi un poco adagio08:28
• 2Tovey: Sonata eroica for solo violin, op.29: Scherzo: Vivace06:34
• 3Tovey: Sonata eroica for solo violin, op.29: Andante tranquillo –07:11
• 4Tovey: Sonata eroica for solo violin, op.29: Fuga. Allegro moderato e pesante ma con fuoco09:37
• Albert Edward Sammons (1886 - 1957): Virtuosic Studies, op.21:
• 5Sammons: Virtuosic Studies, op.21: Study no.1: Allegro moderato01:31
• 6Sammons: Virtuosic Studies, op.21: Study no.3: Moderato01:02
• 7Sammons: Virtuosic Studies, op.21: Study no.8: Moderato01:51
• 8Sammons: Virtuosic Studies, op.21: Study no.9: Allegro moderato01:43
• 9Sammons: Virtuosic Studies, op.21: Study no.19: Allegro02:19
• 10Sammons: Virtuosic Studies, op.21: Study no.26: Moderato04:05
• 11Sammons: Virtuosic Studies, op.21: Study no.33: Presto02:49
• 12Sammons: Virtuosic Studies, op.21: Study no.35: Allegro02:49
• Edward Elgar (1857 - 1934): Études caratéristiques pour violon seul, op.24:
• 13Elgar: Études caratéristiques pour violon seul, op.24: A. Allegro04:13
• 14Elgar: Études caratéristiques pour violon seul, op.24: B. Allegro02:16
• 15Elgar: Études caratéristiques pour violon seul, op.24: C. Allegro01:49
• 16Elgar: Études caratéristiques pour violon seul, op.24: D. Presto04:26
• 17Elgar: Études caratéristiques pour violon seul, op.24: E. Allegretto04:08
• Total Runtime01:06:51

Info for Eroica

All of the music, by the three different composers on this album, is for unaccompanied violin. Rupert Marshall-Luck gives gold-medal performances of works that appeal on two different levels. The first of these is exacting violin technique. The second, which will appeal to the more general listener, is how these pieces would work as concert music.

The works of the three composers, Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1875 – 1940), Albert Edward Sammons (1886 – 1957) and Sir Edward Elgar (1857 – 1934) fulfil the demands of these two ideas in quite different proportions. Sir Donald Tovey is possibly remembered more as an educator and musicologist rather than as a composer, yet it is his piece, Sonata Eroica for solo violin, op 29,which works unarguably well as a concert piece. The underlying importance of violin technique is certainly there with scalar and arpeggiated passages throughout, along with double and even triple stopping. However, these are used to underline the shaping of the splendidly contrasting Sonata movements. The most magnificent, both for violin technique and audience appeal, is the final Fuga. One might think that to write a fugue on a solo instrument is impossible. Not so. Tovey and Marshall-Luck prove how it can be done brilliantly well.

Sammons is best remembered as a performer and teacher. The eight Studies chosen from his Virtuosic Studies, op 21 are receiving their world première recording. Such music, if played straight and without imagination, can have the musical appeal of juggling or plate spinning, where interest is solely limited to the prowess of the performer. However partly because of his choice of pieces and, as a result of his feeling for details of phrasing, Marshall-Luck promotes them as concert pieces, possibly encores. Study no. 9 with its light bowing has a touch of humour, while Study no. 33, a dazzling whirlwind of a piece works best of all.

Elgar’s five Études Caractéristiques pour violin seule, op. 24 would be excellent encores. The first is powerfully reminiscent of Bach, the second has open air folk-song qualities, the third is balletic, the fourth Presto is fiery, while the concluding study perhaps suggests rippling waters.

This album is a must for eager students of the violin, but there are elements which will also appeal to the serious listener. (Alan Cooper)

Rupert Marshall-Luck,violin

Rupert Marshall-Luck
Hailed by BBC Music Magazine for his “handsome tone and laser-like tuning”, and acclaimed by audiences and critics alike for the verve, commitment and intelligence of his performances, Rupert Marshall-Luck appears as soloist and recitalist at major festivals and venues throughout the UK as well as in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA. His extensive discography includes many World Première recordings as well as conspectuses of the complete music for violin and piano of Herbert Howells and C. Hubert H. Parry; and his solo performances have been frequently broadcast on BBC Radio 3, ABC Classic FM (Australia), RTÉ (Ireland), SABC (South Africa), Radio Suisse Romande (Switzerland), and in Canada, France, New Zealand and the USA. His recordings have attracted glowing critical acclaim from the international musical press, including BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, International Record Review (“We have music of distinction and performances to match. A decisive view of how the structures must knit together and considerable mental stamina from both players are firmly implanted into the performances”), MusicWeb International and The Strad; a recent five-star review of Joseph Holbrooke’s F-major Sonata in the French music publication Classica stated “The perilous double-stopping passages are overcome by Rupert Marshall-Luck with an athletic ease; while his warm tone is marvellous in the elegiac lyricism of the slow movement”. A disc of John Pickard’s chamber music for Toccata Classics (TOCC 0150) was also praised by Fanfare in the USA, being highlighted as “a compact disc not to be missed”.

As well as his busy schedule as a soloist and chamber musician, Rupert is active as a writer and speaker on the performing aspects of music, and he has presented lecture-recitals, seminars and masterclasses at the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford; at Birmingham Conservatoire, the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and the Royal Academy of Music; and at University College London. His radio broadcasts include several appearances on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune and a programme for Radio 4’s series Tales from the Stave; and his article Volksmusik, Landschaften und Turbulenzen: Die Lieder und die Kammermusik von Vaughan Williams (Folktunes, Landscape and Turbulence: the Songs and Chamber Music of Vaughan Williams) was published in edition text + kritik (Richard Boorberg Verlag) in December 2018. His scholarly-critical edition of Elgar’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, op.82, was published in 2019 by G. Henle Verlag of Munich; this forms part of a series of editions for the publisher which together will comprise the complete violin music of Elgar.

Rupert plays a violin by Charles Jean Baptiste Collin-Mézin of 1899. Collin-Mézin won several medals and prizes for his instruments, and received accolades from many prominent violinists, including Joseph Joachim, some considering a Collin-Mézin violin to be equal to a Stradivari for flexibility of sound – indeed, he has been referred to as “the French Stradivari”. He uses a bow by Eugenio Praga, a highly-respected nineteenth-century Genoese maker who was appointed as a custodian of Paganini’s 1743 Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ violin; and a newly-commissioned bow by the British archetier Timothy Richards.

Booklet for Eroica