A new disc by one of Challenge’s outstanding female violinists: Lisa Jacobs performs a collection of late-Romantic Nordic works for violin and orchestra, the piece de resistance of which is Nielsen’s 1911 Violin Concerto. Two works by Halvorsen and Svendsen, written in the style of the Norwegian romantic tradition, complete the album.

Propelled by the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, the longing for pure wilderness and the cultivation of rural life, the Nordic National Romanticism arose. All three composers on this disc are descendants of this Nordic Romanticism. In their compositions, Svendsen and Halvorsen remain in form and harmony close to the music of their good friend Edvard Grieg and the distinctive Nordic use of melody; Carl Nielsen, however, goes on a voyage of discovery towards a new idiom with a strong desire for renewal on the one hand and a great need for the revival of the pure archaic on the other.

His Violin Concerto clearly shows this conflict. In a neo-classical 4-part form, reminiscent of the set-up of the Baroque concerto grosso, with seemingly simple classical-like themes and references to both Bach and Mozart, he takes the listeners on an incredible adventure throughout Nordic landscapes of pure wilderness and takes all sorts of harmonic and rhythmic twists and turns.

Dutch violin virtuoso Lisa Jacobs is known for her passionate performances, interesting programs and communicative qualities on stage. She is equally at home on the concert stage with concertos, chamber music, recitals and solo works. She has played in all the major concert halls of the Netherlands and around the world, both as a soloist with renowned orchestras and conductors, as a recitalist with her pianist Ksenia Kouzmenko and at chamber music festivals, always to highly critical acclaim, receiving brilliant reviews and finding ecstatic audiences.

‘Sensual allure in Jacobs’s deeply felt, beguilingly phrased readings’ - BBC Music Magazine

‘Magisterial authority and tonal splendor’ - Fanfare magazine

‘Audience stunned into breathless silence’ - Grafschafter Nachrichten, Germany

‘Musical mastery of this calibre is rarely heard’ - Dutch Telegraph