The 20th-century Concerto Grosso

“Altogether this is an attractive disc: all the 'ripieno' soloists are excellent, Karl-Heinz Schutz's flute and Robert Nagy's cello calling for special mention. Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields provide accompaniments of the necessary brio and point.” --BBC Music Magazine, February 2014 ****

“diverting rather than revelatory examples of the post-First World War reaction against the grand, soloistic traditions of the Romantic concerto...You may not respond to everything in the programme but [Prinz] and her associates are convincing advocates throughout.” --Gramophone Magazine, January 2014

On this disc, we feature the works of three composers – Vincent d’Indy, Ernst Krenek, and Erwin Schulhoff – who all in the mid- to late-1920s adopted neoclassicism and chose to write works in the neo-baroque concerto grosso style, using a combination of a small orchestra and a small group of soloists. D’Indy wrote the Concert, his last orchestral piece, at the age of seventy-five. It combines a lean scoring and strong, lucid instrumental lines with romantic harmonic colouring. The disc also features the world premiere recording of the Concertino that Krenek wrote before he was forced, as a ‘degenerate’ artist, to leave Austria in 1938. In the Concerto doppio, Schulhoff turns to the concerto grosso because of its affinity with jazz, a musical genre that greatly influenced him, allowing him to break free from more conventional musical forms. The works are performed by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields led by Sir Neville Marriner, who are joined by the flautist Karl-Heinz Schütz, violinist Christoph Koncz, cellist Robert Nagy, and the pianist Maria Prinz who in 2011 came up with the idea behind this disc.