Music for Ukraine Daniel Hope

• Myroslav Skoryk (1938 - 2020): Melody - From "The High Pass":
• 1 Skoryk: Melody - From "The High Pass" 02:49
• Jan Freidlin (b. 1944): 7 Landscapes:
• 2 Freidlin: 7 Landscapes: I. White Landscape 02:50
• Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937): Melodies of the Moments - Cycle III:
• 3 Silvestrov: Melodies of the Moments - Cycle III: I. Lullaby 03:37
• Jan Freidlin: 7 Landscapes:
• 4 Freidlin: 7 Landscapes: IV. Sunny Glade 02:04
• Valentin Silvestrov: Melodies of the Moments - Cycle VII:
• 5 Silvestrov: Melodies of the Moments - Cycle VII: III. Musical Moment 02:16
• Jan Freidlin: 7 Landscapes:
• 6 Freidlin: 7 Landscapes: VI. Stars in the Lake 02:53
• Total Runtime 16:29

Info for Music for Ukraine

Daniel Hope recorded the EP "Music for Ukraine" together with Ukrainian pianist Alexey Botvinov. The program includes works by Ukrainian composers Valentin Silvestrov, Myroslav Skoryk and Jan Freidlin that deserve to be heard. Especially now.

Every June for the past six years, I have been an artist in residence at the Odessa Classics Festival. Odessa is a mecca for violinists, thanks first to Ukrainian violin pedagogue Pyotr Stolyarsky. Stolyarsky's name stands for the special method of professional musical education of talented children. In 1933, he founded the legendary Stolyarsky Music School in Odessa, where teaching still takes place today. He taught some of the greatest violin legends, including David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein, Samuil Furer, Mikhail Fichtenholz, and Boris Goldstein, who in turn taught my own teacher, Zakhar Bron.

Odessa Classics was founded by my friend, Ukrainian pianist Alexey Botvinov. Through him I came to know and love Odessa, its rich cultural heritage and its music-loving people. Alexey and I planned to be in Kiev in March 2022 to work with composer Valentin Silvestrov and record an album of his music. A few days before the Russian attack, Alexey left Ukraine with part of his family: they cannot return now. Together, we quickly organized televised benefit concerts for Ukraine in the Frauenkirche in Dresden and in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. The piano manufacturer Bechstein donated more than 500,000 euros for Ukraine, and both the current and former German presidents supported us.

The Beethovenhaus Bonn, of which I am president, set up the emergency aid program "Hope for Peace" to support refugee musicians from Ukraine with benefit concerts and to offer them both accommodation and opportunities to record music and play concerts. In the meantime, 84-year-old Valentin Silvestrov managed to escape the bombing of Kiev and make his way on foot across the border to safety. After he attended our concert in Berlin on March 11, we were all the more determined to record his music as soon as possible.

All proceeds will be donated to "Aktion Deutschland Hilft". This is our next attempt to keep Ukrainian music alive. We recorded an EP with works by three composers: Silvestrov, Skoryk and Freidlin, giants of Ukrainian music. All proceeds from these digital tracks will be donated to "Aktion Deutschland Hilft", which supports Ukraine. We hope that this will also be the starting point for a digital collection that we - and perhaps others - can expand in the future. For example, the young violinist Illia Bondarenko, whom I taught last year and who filmed himself playing a Ukrainian folk song in a basement vault in Kiev, accompanied by 94 violinists from 29 countries, has just completed a new piece for us, though it arrived after this recording was completed.

There are many other works that deserve to be heard. Especially now. (Daniel Hope)

Daniel Hope, violin
Alexey Botvinov, piano

Daniel Hope
British violinist Daniel Hope has toured the world as a virtuoso soloist for more than twenty years, and as the youngest ever member of the Beaux Arts Trio during its last six seasons. He is renowned for his musical versatility and creativity and for his dedication to humanitarian causes. Hope performs as soloist with the world’s major orchestras and conductors, directs many ensembles from the violin, and plays chamber music in a wide variety of traditional and new venues. Raised in London and educated at Highgate School, Hope earned degrees at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with renowned Russian pedagogue Zakhar Bron.

London’s Observer called Hope “the most exciting British string player since Jacqueline du Pré,” and recent New York Times reviews summarized his unique attributes: “... a violinist of probing intellect and commanding style... In a business that likes tidy boxes drawn around its commodities, the British violinist Daniel Hope resists categorization.’

Daniel Hope, an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2007, has earned numerous Grammy nominations, a Classical BRIT award, the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis and five ECHO Klassik Prizes. He previously recorded for Warner Classics and Nimbus, playing Bach, Britten, Elgar, Finzi, Foulds, Ireland, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Penderecki, Schnittke, Shostakovich, Tippett, Walton, and Weill. His recording of the Berg Violin Concerto was voted to be the “best available of all time” by Gramophone Magazine in 2010. His Mendelssohn CD for Deutsche Grammophon featuring the Violin Concerto and Octet was voted one of the finest Mendelssohn recordings by the New York Times in 2009. His recent release for Deutsche Grammophon was a tribute to the great and highly influential violinist and composer Joseph Joachim (1831- 1907) and centred around the Bruch concerto, a work with which Joachim was closely associated. The Bruch was recorded with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Sakari Oramo. "Four Seasons Recomposed" – the newest release in DG’s “Recomposed” series presents Daniel Hope with the Berlin Konzerthaus Chamber Orchestra, conducted by André de Ridder, in a world première recording of British composer Max Richter’s." Spheres" – which is Hope’s own project, due out in early 2013 – is a curated collection of repertoire celebrating the idea, first brought forward by Pythagoras, that planetary movement creates its own kind of music. This idea has fascinated philosophers, musicians, and mathematicians for centuries. The CD’s program includes music in a variety of styles, from Baroque to minimalist, by Bach, Faure, contemporary masters like Arvo Pärt and Michael Nyman, and younger composers who have specially composed new works for Hope, based on the idea of spherical music. These include Gabriel Prokofiev, Ludovico Einaudi, Alex Baranowski and Aleksey Igudesmann. Hope is joined by the Berlin Rundfunk-choir under the direction of Simon Halsey on this disc.

Hope regularly directs chamber orchestras as violin soloist with ensembles including the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Camerata Salzburg, and Lucerne Festival Strings. He has performed at the world’s most important festivals, such as the BBC Proms, Hollywood Bowl and the Lucerne, Ravinia, Salzburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Tanglewood festivals. Daniel Hope has performed in all of the world’s most prestigious venues and with the world’s great orchestras. Highlights include the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, as well as the major orchestras of Berlin, Birmingham, Dallas, Detroit, Dresden, Israel, London, Moscow, Oslo, Paris, Stockholm, and Vienna. He is Associate Music Director of the Savannah Music Festival and Artistic Director at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Summer Festival in Germany. He has also published three bestselling books.

Daniel Hope plays the 1742 “ex-Lipiński” Guarneri del Gesù, placed generously at his disposal by an anonymous family from Germany. The instrument carries the name of its owner, the 19th century Polish violinist Karol Lipiński, who shared the stage with Paganini, Schumann and Liszt.

This album contains no booklet.