Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 05/11/2016, uploaded on 01/17/2017

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Légende, Op.17, by Henryk Wieniawski                                                                                                 

Polish violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski, who studied at the Paris Conservatoire as a boy before making a career in St. Petersburg and Brussels, was widely considered the most dazzling virtuoso to grace the concert halls of Europe and the United States in the generation after Paganini’s death in 1840. His technical wizardry is inscribed in the two-dozen published works he left behind, in which jaunty dance rhythms and sweeping melodies characteristic of his native Poland combine with the cool, formal elegance of Parisian fashion. His Légende Op. 17, composed around 1860, exploits the rich polyphonic capacity of the violin through passagework of searing intensity requiring the sustained use of double stops. Légende also proved to be a valuable asset in Wieniawski’s romantic life: a performance he gave of the work so enchanted the parents of his love, Isabella, that they finally approved of him marrying their daughter.       Notes by Benjamin Laude

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.