A musical showcase for Schnittke, a great musical maverick.

Ahead of his Australian performance with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the violinist talks about learning at the feet of Yehudi Menuhin and pranking Rostropovich.

Any good new recording of The Four Seasons should always be welcomed. This one by Daniel Hope and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra is more than good: it’s outstanding. Listening to these dramatic, historically-informed performances, one is immediately struck by how Vivaldi’s prefatory sonnets and musical sound-painting can become not mere evocations of natural phenomena but starting points for deliberate, and far more exciting, abstractions which find their loci in pure emotion. Especially to be welcomed is Hope’s fluent, abundant decoration of the melodic line, particularly in the slower movements, which is echoed by the marvellously imaginative continuo section’s own elaborations. Offering a bracing new take on a classic is one thing; providing a new context for it is something else. And that something else may well be what ultimately attracts you. There have been myriad responses from various composers to Vivaldi’s original, such as Kalman Cseki’s Alpha, Apocalypse and Armageddon and Oliver Davis’ settings of Vivaldi’s sonnets, Anno and Anno Epilogue. Here we have something different: a pre-existing or newly-composed work assigned to each month of the year, with accompanying artwork – paintings or drawings – that is beautifully reproduced in the recording’s booklet along with copious notes by Hope….

Very much a Renaissance man, the violinist talks about life, thinking outside the box and his hopes and fears for all of our futures.

If the violin is the tempestuous, attention-hogging soprano of the string world, the viola is the mezzo – gently melancholic, often found lurking in the shadows just beyond the violin’s spotlight. With this album, Lawrence Power asks a question: what would happen if the viola took centre-stage, stepping forward not just for high-minded sonatas and concertos but for precisely the kind of bravura concert pieces so beloved by violinists?   The answer may not offer the most satisfying recital programme, but it does shed light on some little-known and still-less-often performed repertoire, giving the character-actor of the string family a bold new starring role in the process. Glance down the repertoire list for Fin de Siècle and you get a thrillingly wide-angle view on a period of French music too often distilled down to just Debussy and Ravel, with maybe a smattering of Chausson if you’re lucky. Henri Büsser, Georges Hüe, Léon Honnoré, Lucien Durosoir – the names are as fragrant as their music, whether it’s Büsser’s episodic Appassionato – an ear-seizing opener that packs both high-wire angst and reflective ennui into its barely five-minute span – Hüe’s moody sonata-in-miniature Thème Varié, with its wistful theme and highly characterised sequence…

Daniel Hope is one of those musicians who can convince in just about any repertoire.