Paganini, Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto No. 1 - Midori

Midori has yet to celebrate her 40th birthday, but has been performing in public at the highest level for over 30 years. This remarkable recording was made when she was just 13 years old, and has been one of the benchmark versions of this concerto ever since.

Paganini's First Concerto is given in its complete version, and is the most popular of his six violin concertos, displaying not only his extraordinary virtuosity, but also his great gift for melody.

'A splendid new version of Paganini's Violin Concerto in D, the most famous, because of the enticing lyrical theme of the first movement. Midori, an astonishingly accomplished 13-year-old, is fully equal to the work's formidable technical demands and one is never made to feel uncomfortable when she is dealing with the pyrotechnics of the upper tessitura ... Midori offers good performances of two Tchaikovsky morceaux de concert, producing some ravishingly melancholy timbre in the Sérénade mélancolique.' Gramophone, AUGUST 1998