Baiba Skride

Baiba Skride – Britten: Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 15 & Double Concerto for Violin, Viola & Orchestra in B Minor (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:52 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Orfeo

The story of the discovery and resurrection of Britten’s Double Concerto for Violin and Viola is one of those rare musicological moments that can capture the interest of even the casual music lover. Britten had started composing it as a very young man but never quite finished it, even though the work had progressed quite far. So, it was only after his death that the premiere took place, in 1997. Unlike that work, the Violin Concerto, Op. 15 found itself immediately thrust onto the world’s musical stage, its genesis having been rather straightforward, if hardly smooth. Britten had left Great Britain before the outbreak of World War II in Europe and so he composed it in Canada and the US.

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Baiba Skride – Lee Bradshaw: The Ties That Bind (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:19 minutes | 1,57 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Navona

Renowned as individual performers, Skride violist Ivan Vukčević and ‘cellist Harriet Krijgh also collaborate as part of a flexible European-based ensemble called Harriet and Friends and their knowledge of each other in their ensemble skills is paramount to the success of this album.
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Baiba Skride – Eller: Violin Concerto, Fantasy, Symphonic Legend & Symphony No. 2 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:16 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Ondine

With a career spanning two thirds of the 20th century, Estonian composer Heino Eller (1887-1970) can be rightfully considered as one of the founders of the country’s national musical style. His style remains resolutely tonal while taking on board the influences of French impressionism, German expressionism, and of course Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius, but also a certain “nationalism” in the choice of themes. At the outset of his career in the 1920s, his country had been liberated from the grip of the Russian Empire before falling back into the hands of the USSR in 1940. In those twenty years, a feeling of a distinct Estonian culture developed.
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Baiba Skride – Violin Unlimited (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:21 minutes | 1014 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Orfeo

On her first album for solo violin, internationally acclaimed and renowned Latvian violinist Baiba Skride interprets selected sonatas by Erwin Schulhoff, Paul Hindemith, Philipp Jarnach and Eduard Erdmann. Although Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo are regarded as the measure of every violinist’s technical skill and maturity, compositions for unaccompanied violin became increasingly rare in subsequent epochs (the classical and the romantic era). It wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that Max Reger made a conspicuous contribution in this field with altogether eleven sonatas. His example was an impetus that very plausibly inspired his contemporaries and successors to come up with the four contributions to this genre from the 1920s on this album.

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