Ernest: Violin Music

Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst – Violin Music (Naxos label), Josef Špaček, Gordon Back ★★★★★
I recently acquired some new CDs from Archiv Music (www.arkivmusic.com), which is a good source for inexpensive classical music. You’ll be seeing some of those reviews in the next few weeks. Arkiv Music provides better search engines for finding particular music and offers recommendations and decent critical analyses of CDs. They are competitive with Amazon.com and often are cheaper than Amazon. This was an album on sale, and since I’ve had no music by Ernst, decided to try it. Ernst wrote in the era of the virtuoso performer, sitting in the lime-light of Paganini. Ernst shows him most capable of writing technical yet very acceptable music. The performances on this CD are well recorded, with a spacious quality to them, and executed with great feeling and understanding for the composer. While not well known, this is a delightful CD to listen to, and recommended by me.