Recordings

Leó Weiner’s legacy as an educator influenced generations of Hungarian musicians for a half century. His early work as a composer was internationally acclaimed for its new engaging sound, resulting from a unique synthesis of German and French Romanticism allied to a Hungarian musical language. These chamber works with piano are some of the best of his early opuses, from the ‘classical nobility and deep poetic substance’ of the Ballade, to the dramatic and stunningly beautiful Violin Sonata No. 2 – two pieces that were popular and widely performed in their day.

Leó Weiner was one of the most important of all Hungarian pedagogues as well as being a distinguished composer. The success of his Serenade, written when he was 21, was immediate – its light, intimate and richly melodic qualities, some of which derive from stylised Hungarian dances, are still captivating today. The Violin Concerto No. 1 is a masterly orchestration of his Violin Sonata, Op. 9, alternating between the playful and the dramatic. The performance heard here restores 115 bars that were cut from the fourth movement, making this the first complete recording.