Janine Jansen BRAHMS - BARTOK 1

Two landmark concertos receive sensational performances in Janine Jansen’s latest recording for Decca, set for international release in November 2015. The Dutch violinist, described by The Times as “a player you follow wherever she leads”, presents her profound insights into Johannes Brahms’s monumental Violin Concerto and youthful Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1. She recorded the Brahms with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the Bartók with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano. Jansen’s past Decca releases have achieved astonishing success in the digital music charts, earning her the title of “Queen of the Download” (Independent) and No. 1 positions in the iTunes pop and classical charts.

Janine Jansen first performed Brahms’s Violin Concerto with Antonio Pappano in 2012, developing a visionary interpretation of the work over the course of eight concerts.

“I remember feeling very excited to be working with him, but nothing had prepared me for the sheer passion and energy that he generates from an orchestra,” she recalls. “Most especially he encourages a singing, radiant cantabile.”

The violinist and conductor returned to the score in February 2015, expressing its magical blend of lyrical beauty and symphonic power in three performances recorded live in vibrant high-definition sound by Decca.

Jansen is the first major artist to couple the two works on the same album. “To me they seem a natural pairing,” she observes.

Janine Jansen’s Decca recording of the Brahms concerto can be heard in the soundtrack of Public Works (Publieke werken), a major new Dutch feature film scheduled for release on 10 December 2015. Public Works is based on Thomas Rosenboom’s eponymous novel, set in the 1880s, about an Amsterdam violin maker, his nephew, a country pharmacist, and simmering tensions within late nineteenth-century society.

Brahms was inspired to create his only violin concerto in the summer of 1878 by his old friend, the violinist and composer Joseph Joachim. The work includes fiendishly difficult passages written to suit Joachim’s long fingers and a finale filled with the energy and spice of Hungarian gypsy music. Bartók’s first violin concerto, written in 1907-08 but not published until the late 1950s, also includes elements of traditional music from the composer’s native Hungary. Its strongest influence, however, proved to Steffi Geyer, the strikingly beautiful young Hungarian violinist with whom Bartók was deeply in love. (Decca Classics)

Janine Jansen PROKOFIEV

Janine Jansen is the most subtle of interpreters, and always a sensitive partner. In the Second Violin Concerto, she keeps sentiment at bay, holding back for a sense of mystery in the first movement's counter subject, and capturing an icy purity in the Concerto's central song. She responds cannily to Prokofiev's pared-back orchestral forces. This is not the usual patchwork of ideas, but an argument that Vladimir Jurowski keeps urgently on the move with the LPO soloists . . . Jansen's colleagues in the companion pieces are her equals, too. Boris Brovtsyn marches her otherworldly poise in the first and third movements of the Sonata for two violins. In Prokofiev's dark, masterful Violin Sonata No. 1, the moments of headlong attack are . . . fully realised by pianist Itamar Golan. (David Nice, BBC Music Magazine)

This splendidly recorded performance of the Second Concerto accentuates its stark and sudden contrasts -- the first movement's swings of mood and texture, the Andante's pairing of romantic melody with mechanical accompaniment . . . Jansen's playing, notable for its confident manner and wide expressive nuance . . . persuades us of the validity of her view of the concerto . . . In the Sonata for two violins, Jansen and Brovtsyn employ a wide range of tone colour, matching each other in expansiveness and virtuosity. In the quicker movements they allow the tempo to slow down for quieter passages . . . For me, the highlight of the disc is the Violin Sonata, surely one of Prokofiev's greatest works. Its sombre power is fully revealed in Jansen and Golan's account, from the first movement's anguished double-stopping, brittle pizzicato and icy scale passages, through the ferocious combat and sweet regret of the two middle movements, to the finale's manic energy and intensity.(Duncan Bruce, Gramophone) 

. . . her silvery tone and searching musicianship ensure maximum intelligence and beauty . . . simple, unaffected magic . . . [Concerto]: splendidly played by a soloist in happy harness with the London Philharmonic and Vladimir Jurowski, a conductor who understands Prokofiev's changing moods better than most . . . equally gripping accounts of the Sonata for Two Violins of 1932 and the dark and worried Sonata for Violin and Piano . . . Itamar Golan (piano) and Boris Brovtsyn (violin) play with Jansen as if joined at the hip. Whether the music's fiery or delicate, this superb disc, gorgeously recorded, should give lasting pleasure. (Geoff Brown, The Times)

Janine Jansen BACH Concertos

Janine releases a brand new Bach recording, joined by a hand-picked group of friends - all exceptional musicians. Recording the popular E major and A minor concertos alongside the Violin and Oboe Concerto in C minor and two violin sonatas for the first time, Jansen and her ensemble explore these well-known works with a spirit of complete freshness. In the double concerto she is joined by two-time ECHO Award winner Ramón Ortega Quero. Janine's ensemble accompaniment on the recording includes her brother, cellist Maarten Jansen, and her father, harpsichordist Jan Jansen.

This record follows the unique chamber footprint that characterize many of her bestselling recordings. Janine has been a top selling artist since her debut recording in 2004 for Decca, and has sold more than 300,000 records. Her most recent album, a Prokofiev disc with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski, went Gold in the Netherlands soon after release last autumn.

Her recording of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons has sold more than 20,000 albums digitally since February this year, became the iTunes #1 classical album in 37 countries from Austria to Vietnam, the #1 iTunes pop album in nine countries and hit the Top 10 iTunes pop chart in Brazil, India, Hong Kong, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands and Singapore. To date the recording has sold 147,000 units since release, with 50,000 of these being digital sales. In addition the Vivaldi release has sold 100,000 single tracks downloads.

Janine Jansen SCHUBERT String Quintet - SCHOENBERG Verklärte Nacht

Even though violinist Janine Jansen appears alone in the cover photo of this 2012 Decca release, and her name is featured in large letters, no one should mistake this album as a solo effort. The recordings of Franz Schubert's String Quintet in C major and Arnold Schoenberg's sextet Verklärte Nacht are ensemble performances, and the musicians who play with Jansen form an artistic bond that seems utterly at odds with the star-oriented artwork. Jansen is certainly behind the choice of works, because they were programmed on her critically praised concert at Wigmore Hall. But beyond Decca's marketing decision emphasizing Jansen as the main performer, equal attention should be given to her colleagues, violinist Boris Brovtsyn, violists Amichai Grosz and Maxim Rysanov, and cellists Torleif Thedéen and Jens Peter Maintz, who are all comparable in technical skill and expressive abilities. The performance of Verklärte Nacht is impassioned and dark, and the richness of the lower strings contributes greatly to the nocturnal atmosphere of the piece. However, this is also a dynamic work, and Schoenberg's nearly orchestral counterpoint gives intense activity to all six players, with no single part standing out. Schubert's quintet is a trickier piece to get right, because the writing is exposed and transparent in virtually every area of the piece, so no one can get away with inferior playing. On balance, the Schoenberg shows the musicians as a cohesive team that can forge ahead, confronting dense textures and complex harmonies with a forward impetus that makes sense of the tone poem's turbulent emotional imagery, while the Schubert gives the musicians an opportunity to achieve sublime expressions of beauty and transcendence through their control and cooperation. Decca's sound is quite close-up, so practically everything is audible, including the breathing. (Blair Sanderson)