Presto Editor's Choice
February 2021

Daniel Hope (violin), Alexey Botvinov (piano)

Schnittke: Suite in the Old Style
Schnittke: Polka
Schnittke: Tango (Arr. by Andriy Rakhmanin for Violin and Piano)
Schnittke: Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano
Schnittke: Madrigal in memoriam Oleg Kagan for violin solo
Schnittke: Gratulationsrondo
Schnittke: Stille Nacht for Violin & Piano

“In the summer of 1989, when I was 15, my ‘love affair’ with Alfred Schnittke’s music began”, recalls Daniel Hope. Three years later the violinist became acquainted with the Russian composer, studying with and performing for Schnittke many of his works over the next years. “A little more than 20 years after his death, I decided it was time to revisit his music and to pay a recorded tribute to his extraordinary talent. In my mind there is no more striking a talent in contemporary music than that of Alfred Schnittke.”

"Hope’s love and understanding of every facet of Schnittke’s musical personality shines through in every bar of this compelling recital: the Suite in the Old Style is despatched with an almost rustic astringency, whilst the Tango from Agony is deliciously louche and the ‘wrong-note’ Stille Nacht unsettlingly beautiful. Perhaps the stand-out track for me, though, is the unaccompanied Madrigal in memoriam Oleg Kagan, played with the same introspective intensity which made his elegies for former owners of the Violins of Hope so affecting." - Katherine Cooper, Presto Classical, February 2021.