Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2 & Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1

The debut recording of the hugely talented 19-year-old Norwegian violinist Guro Kleven Hagen. It features Max Bruch’s ever-popular First Concerto and Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, opus 63. Guro made her critically acclaimed debut concert performance with the Oslo Philharmonic when she was only 17, and on this CD that same orchestra is conducted by Bjarte Engeset.

On 31 March 2011, when she was only 17, Guro Kleven Hagen made her highly successful debut playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste. She so impressed, she was immediately re-engaged to go on tour with the orchestra the following season. She has already become a winner of numerous international competitions, including EMCY’s Prize for Music in the Menuhin Competition 2010 and 2nd Prize in the Eurovision Young Musician Competition in Vienna 2010. She has also been the recipient of the Statoil Award (2013), the Norwegian Soloist Award (2010), the Prinz-von-Hessen-Preis in Kronberg, Germany (2009), and in 2008 was chosen as Norway’s “Young Musician of the year”. On this recording Guro plays on a Bergonzi violin, known as the “Kreisler-Bergonzi”, which has been loaned to her by the Dextra Musica Foundation.

Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1 was completed in 1868 and remains to this day his most famous piece. More ‘classic’ in layout than his first concerto, Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No 2 reflects his mature style and actually was the last big scale work he wrote before returning to USSR in 1934. Prokofiev himself drew attention to the way this concerto reflected his “nomadic” existence – the first theme was written in Paris, the slow movement in Voronezh, and the Concerto was completed on 16 August 1935 at Baku, on the Caspian Sea.