Gramophone Magazine
January 2024
Editor's Choice

Nemanja Radulović (violin), Double Sens

Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61
Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, Op. 47 ‘Kreutzer'

“This album presents the core of the violin repertoire – Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Kreutzer Sonata,” says Nemanja Radulović. While these Beethoven masterpieces have been recorded countless times, Radulović’s approach to each of them has an element of innovation. For the concerto, he has expanded Double Sens, the chamber ensemble he founded in 2008. “I wanted to retain the special character of Double Sens as an ensemble which plays without a conductor and explores new ways of interpretation ... In our recording of the concerto, we wanted to convey a range of emotions – courage, risk, joy, love, rage, sadness, nostalgia, and magical serenity and tenderness.” Rather than playing the grandly scaled Kreutzer Sonata in partnership with a pianist, he performs it here in his own arrangement for solo violin and five-part string ensemble. “While remaining faithful to Beethoven, I allowed myself to exercise my imagination.”

"Of course, conducting from the fiddle is a centuries-old tradition, but what Radulović accomplishes in this performance is remarkable as every element of the score is presented with near total interpretative unanimity." - Gramophone Magazine, January 2024