Joshua Bell

Joshua Bell – Butterfly Lovers (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:18 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Grammy-award winning violinist Joshua Bell presents a captivating performance of the Butterfly Lovers Concerto, one of the best-known classical works in China and inspired by the ancient legend of the same name. In addition, Bell performs new arrangements of well-known Western classical repertoire adapted for the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, an ensemble of traditional Chinese folk instruments. Hear the lush Méditation from the opera Thaïs, the passionate Zigeunerweisen, and the virtuosic Introduction et Rondo capriccioso with a unique orchestral sound.

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Joshua Bell – Johann Sebastian Bach (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 50:01 minutes | 284 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Reactions to this release may well depend on how listeners feel about violinist Joshua Bell’s music-making in general. Bell is an heir to the violin idols of the early 20th century, and he grabs attention and doesn’t let it go: his tone is startlingly brilliant, his execution flawless, his insights into the music generally well-worn ones. In the two Bach violin concertos that make up the bulk of this Sony release, that’s what’s here, and he is ideally partnered by the champions in the silvery-strings derby, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, under his own direction. He holds the ensemble together with a naturalness that takes the whole enterprise beyond the old-fashioned. But there is a new wrinkle to this release: a pair of arrangements of arrangements. Most daring, and perhaps less successful, is an orchestration of Mendelssohn’s version of the Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 for solo violin in D minor, BWV 1004. Bell’s idea seems to be that this is something his forerunners of a century ago might have done, and indeed the Mendelssohn arrangement is a work that gives insights into how he and his time experienced Bach. Adding the orchestra to it introduces another level of noise, however, and it’s not at all clear that the result is to the good. The situation is similar with the little Gavotte and Rondeau twice filtered through Schumann and the same arranger as with the Mendelssohn, Julian Malone. None of this is going to bother listeners coming to this album already enamored of Bell’s flashing tone, however, and it must be said that on that terrain he is in unusually good form here.
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Joshua Bell – Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto, Op. 35 – Mélodie – Danse russe from Swan Lake, Op. 20 (Act III) (2005/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/176,4 kHz | Time – 51:27 minutes | 1,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell is joined by Michael Tilson Thomas and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for this must-have recording. Captured live, this exciting album is the concerto as the composer wrote it, without cuts or alterations to the score. It also includes Tchaikovsky’s Meditation and Danse russe from Swan Lake. This is a definitive reading in which Bell breathes new life to this rich classic with his masterful virtuosity.

No matter how many other recordings you possess or may have heard, Bell’s Tchaikovsky Concerto is a must. – Classics Today
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Joshua Bell – Bruch: Scottish Fantasy, Op. 46 / Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 26 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:43 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

While Max Bruch’s First Concerto was recorded, re-recorded and over-recorded to the nth degree, we can’t say the same of Bruch’s very elegant Scottish Fantasy Enter Joshua Bell, the new artistic director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, both playing the violin and heading up an ensemble to offer us both the Concerto – which he had recorded about thirty years ago with Marriner – and the Fantasy, a discographic first for him. This Fantasy, written in 1880 after the Second Concerto, was Sarasate but first performed by Joachim. The composer weaves it together from an infinitely elegant tissue of themes, and melodic impressions of Scotland, real or imagined. Joshua Bell, of Scottish descent himself, swims like a wild salmon through the clear waters of lochs and highland torrents, while the orchestra, clearly rapt, offers him a beautiful foil.
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Joshua Bell – At Home with Music (Live) (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 45:03 minutes | 478 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

“At Home With Music” is a glimpse inside the home of one of the world’s greatest violinists. Enjoy your own private concert from Joshua Bell, featuring vocalist Larisa Martínez and music by Chopin, Gershwin, Bach and more.
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