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Daniel Hope's Berg Concerto recording voted "Top choice" of all available recordings
Gramophone Magazine has voted Daniel Hope's 2004 award-winning recording of the Berg Violin Concerto as their "Top choice" of all available recordings.

Berg’s Violin Concerto appeared only infrequently on LPs: Ivry Gitlis, André Gertler, and Louis Krasner (who commissioned it) made the three monaural recordings that carried the concerto pretty much through the early stereophonic era. Later, they were joined by Isaac Stern; but the ensuing digital era has witnessed a spate of new recordings and interpretative ideas... André Gertler made an impact in the Concerto that nevertheless represented only a suggestion, though hardly a faint one, of its expressive possibilities. Isaac Stern unfolded the work’s programmatic tableau with the rich, sweet tone he produced in those halcyon days. Among later interpreters, Perlman followed Stern, while Mutter, together with Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Orchestra, pulverized the Concerto’s lines, and Mark Kaplan took a flexible approach that fit the grim story line like a glove.

Daniel Hope sings with Gertler’s understanding but probes even deeper into the possibilities of nuance the violin part offers to an empathetic soloist. Like Gertler, he stresses the work’s lyricism, which he inflects in a high romantic style well in accord with Berg’s own syncretistic vision. The first section is insinuating; the catastrophe, overpowering; and the conclusion, ethereal. Hope and Paul Watkins follow a new edition prepared by Douglas Jarman, which, according to Jarman’s notes, corrects mistakes transferred from Berg’s manuscript to the full score. Hope himself gave the premiere of that version in 1995.

Britten’s Violin Concerto, from 1940, can be linked to Berg’s in several non-trivial ways: according to Donald Mitchell’s notes, Britten heard the premiere of Berg’s work in Barcelona, both concertos center on tragedies (although Britten’s subject matter appears more global than personal), and they were composed within only a few years of each other. If Berg’s Concerto hardly entered the mainstream for a generation, Britten’s suffered the same neglect. There may be reasons. Technically brilliant, it’s no simple showpiece; lyrical and dramatic, it’s also ominous and disturbing. Daniel Hope brings great technical assurance and panache to the demanding second movement, an incisive Scherzo with a twist of lemon, and to the rapid passagework in the concluding Passacaglia. But he also adapts to the first movement’s fresh lyricism, softening what sometimes seems its brash cockiness but not its steely core, and to the Passacaglia’s haunting final page. As in Berg’s Concerto, he’s miked so close up that he owes some of his commanding presence to the generosity of the engineers, who have trained a bright spotlight on him. (They’ve also revealed the vivid orchestral colors of Berg’s Concerto with great depth of detail and the stormy sonorities of Britten’s work with little diminution of their gale force.) But he owes nothing to them for his firm grasp of the work’s complexities and his tone’s cutting strength. Ruggiero Ricci also combined strength and lyricism in a moving reading that barely emerges from what presumably the engineers took from an air-check. I remember finding Mark Lubotsky’s early readings of this Concerto favoring its more mordant passages (yet with strong-minded, soaring lyricism), while more recently, Maxim Vengerov has also brought a similar mix of sweet and sour to the work. Vengerov’s incisive slashes, however, as in the central movement, never leave ragged edges, as, at least in comparison, do Hope’s.

Daniel Hope may not be the most individual among younger violinists. But of him it can be said without exaggeration that he communicates the kind of dramatic power that only the greatest violinists of the preceding era, notably Heifetz and Oistrakh, could generate at peak moments.

Hope fries the ammeter’s circuitry throughout these two concertos: more than an hour of taut emotional tension. What he’s committed to disc supersedes others I’ve heard as a most visceral and deeply affecting recording of Berg’s Concerto; and that work is coupled with a performance of Britten’s that transmits its raw kinetic power. Strongly recommended.

Robert Maxham

You never know what the brilliant young British violinist Daniel Hope, acclaimed for his ventures into contemporary music, will do next. He has collaborated with actors on works that combine music and words and explored Indian music and jazz. You are as likely to encounter him performing with Bobby McFerrin as with his colleagues from the Beaux Arts Trio.

His latest release, on Warner Classics, pairs the violin concertos of Alban Berg and Benjamin Britten, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paul Watkins. Don't be misled by the photos of Mr. Hope on the front and back of the album (smiling wryly in one and cavalierly tossing his violin into the air in the other), which are meant to maintain his image as a rebel. These are probing and viscerally exciting performances of two milestone 20th century works that could not be more different...

Mr. Hope and the orchestra make this fractured concerto seem inexorable. He is not afraid to execute the frenzied outbursts with steely tone and vehemence. Yet when the music demands, his playing can also be radiant, hushed and poignant.

In 1996 the Alban Berg Estate entrusted Mr. Hope with the premiere of a new critical edition of Berg's 1935 concerto, and this is the first recording to use that score. In a vibrant and bracing performance, Mr. Hope brings an unsentimental tenderness to the wistful, pungently atonal recollections of the recently deceased "angel" to whom the work was dedicated (Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius).

But in episodes of angst and anguish, he plays with the unsparing intensity and gritty incisiveness of an unabashed champion of contemporary music.

Anthony Tommasini

These are magnificent performances, recorded with superlative clarity and presence, of two great 20th century concertos, both of which are already represented in the catalogue by some exceptional interpretations (Vengerov of the Britten, for example). But I do not think I have ever heard a finer account of the Berg than Daniel Hope gives here, not only played to technical perfection but with its poignant emotional content - realised to the full. 

Hope's playing of the lighter elements…is as expressive as his projection of the tragic elements and his poised phrasing of the Bach chorale in the finale. No less exciting and moving is the Britten... Here again Watkins proves to be an ideal accompanist.

The details in the orchestration have rarely been more faithfully and clearly captured on disc. Hope's playing of the coda of the finale is magic.

Michael Kennedy

The CD...is serious, substantial and spectacularly well performed. Young violinists usually generate fire and brimstone, but Hope thinks about his repertoire as well... Hope navigates Berg’s personal narrative of life, death and transfiguration with a warm heart and rock-steady technical skill.

The CD’s biggest attraction may be the Britten concerto written four years after Berg’s. Hope’s impassioned but carefully paced performance can only enhance the stature of this neglected masterpiece.

Geoff Brown

Daniel Hope launches a creative partnership with Paul Watkins to expressive and telling effect. Assured playing makes this a welcome first coupling of two elegiac concertos...the accompanied cadenza is finely sustained, and after an eloquent transition, Hope makes the Adagio a fitting formal and expressive culmination...few recordings convey more of the work’s content...

At almost 36 minutes this is possibly the most expansive reading on disc (of the Britten), but with Hope so much more inside the piece than Vengerov in his recent recording, and Watkins finding the overall cohesiveness that eludes Rostropovich, such a consideration rarely comes to mind. Admirers of Hope will not be disappointed...

Richard Whitehouse

Violin virtuoso Daniel Hope makes his debut for Warner Classics with the Berg violin concerto as you've never heard it before. Thanks to more than 50 emendations by the Berg scholar Douglas Jarman, this is billed as a “world première“ recording - and very accomplished it is, too, with Hope's musical intelligence shining through this haunting work's austere beauties.

With the BBC Symphony under Paul Watkins, formerly its principal cellist, Hope also brings refined tone and dexterity to the Britten concerto, demonstrating why one overexcited US critic hailed him as 'the most exciting British string player since Jacqueline du Pré'.

Anthony Holden

This disc is special...Hope’s clear tone and unsentimental focus produce a performance on a par with many of the best...

Matthew Rye

The young Briton, Daniel Hope, has now recorded the violin concerto in accordance with the new edition, keeping close to the text. His interpretation follows the guidelines in the score meticulously and carefully... Hope takes the Andante, which is often played much too fast, to a sphere of the muted depth of a dream, similar to the historic recording with Krasner under the baton of Anton Webern...

Hope's interpretation of the agony of this movement is overwhelming, and he does not resort to a distorting eccentricity, which the work does not require... Hope's interpretation is, therefore, an excellent one. The rarely heard violin concerto by Benjamin Britten also profits from Hope's outstanding musical commitment.

Julia Spinola

Surprisingly, given that it's only 70 years old, the score of Berg's Violin Concerto has been riddled with transcription errors. Daniel Hope's fine new recording corrects these, revealing one of the 20th century's best-loved works afresh... Hope offers a superb rendition, as he does in the inspired Britten pairing.

Andrew Clarke

Daniel Hope is being talked of in some circles as the most important British string player since Jacqueline du Pré; this release showcases his astonishing skill. The Berg Concerto is a newly corrected version; it was written for the death of an 18-year-old girl and is suitably anguished. The Britten concerto, one of his masterpieces, is also a challenging work but in comparison lush, lyrical, romantic and uplifting.

Peter Culshaw