Daniel Hope

December 31, 2013 at PST

Recomposed By Max Richter: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons

Vivaldi’s beloved 1725 masterwork has proved irresistible to extremely broad audiences—the seasonally themed movements are among the most ubiquitous repertoire in classical music. Using the work as inspirational source material, British composer Max Richter offers a brilliant, haunting reconstruction of the concerti. Richter’s Seasons unfold with eerie, fragmented ambience—adding twittering violins to suggest birdsong in the opening “Spring,” ethereal string harmonics to the mournful second movement, and understated electronic textures throughout. Richter's spacious, dreamlike minimalism bears enough glimpses of Vivaldi to demonstrate a great intimacy with the original score, but his surprising modernization—propelled at times with driving baselines and insistent rhythmic repetitions—has a crisply inventive spirit that seems wholly new. Violinist Daniel Hope offers an exquisite reading of the piece, executing the shimmering solo with lyrical beauty.

24 Tracks

December 31, 2012 at PST

Spheres - Einaudi, Glass, Nyman, Pärt, Richter

19 Tracks

March 30, 2022 at PDT

Music for Ukraine - EP

6 Tracks

July 4, 2024 at PDT

Irish Roots

Daniel Hope’s great-grandfather was from Waterford in Ireland. Here, the South African-born violinist takes a deep dive into his Irish heritage in this evocative album of traditional and classical pieces. Trad comes first in “Morning Nightcap,” where Hope trades sprightly licks with the whistles and uilleann pipes of the group Lúnasa, who also collaborate on the zesty dance-set “The Minor Bee.” Musicians of AIR Ensemble are Hope’s other main partners, contributing the crackling reel “The Red-Haired Boy” and a heart-piercing take on “O’Carolan’s Farewell to Music.”

On the classical front, Hope posts a sparkling account of a violin concerto by Vivaldi, a favorite composer in 18th-century Dublin, and a rhapsodic “Phantasy” written in 1926 by Irish composer Ina Boyle. Sir James and Lady Jeanne Galway add flutes to the ever-poignant “Danny Boy,” curated by Hope with the same affection and empathy which suffuses the entire album.

28 Tracks

March 2, 2017 at PST

For Seasons

A compelling meditation on time and nature.

25 Tracks

February 6, 2020 at PST

Belle Époque

Daniel Hope gives us a glimpse of a world long gone, full of treasures. The Belle Époque—that great flowering of the arts, science, and technology—was especially rich for music, yet under the sheen and surface, darker elements often lurked. The central work is Chausson’s magical Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet, the string quartet partnership here expanded to a string orchestra. Besides the French pieces, Hope gives us contemporaneous music from elsewhere in Europe (Elgar, Schoenberg, Berg, Koechlin, Enescu, and others) and calls on the services of a classy bunch of musical friends. The result is delightful and thought-provoking.

34 Tracks

December 31, 2007 at PST

Vivaldi: Concertos, Aria, Sonata

15 Tracks

June 1, 2023 at PDT

Music for a New Century

Four exhilarating new works that are destined to become modern classics.

8 Tracks

October 31, 2022 at PDT

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Arr. Paul Bateman for Violin and Chamber Orchestra) - Single

“I’ve loved ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ since I was a kid. When you hear it wherever you are in the world, it transports you immediately into the cozy world of Christmas. We’re performing an all-instrumental version, newly transcribed by one of the greatest arrangers of our time, Paul Bateman. Listen out for the gorgeous string sound and the way Paul distributes the melodies and the dulcet tones of the piece between the different string instruments. I just do my best to float above it all!”

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April 10, 2022 at PDT

Experience (Orchestral) - Single

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February 1, 2024 at PST

Dance!

As long as there’s been music, we’ve had dance. That irresistible urge to move our bodies in time with sound and rhythm is a powerful force that binds us collectively and strips away social hierarchies. From the dawn of time, dance has belonged to everyone and no one, from the old to the young, kings to courtiers. In Dance!, violinist Daniel Hope takes us on a whirlwind voyage through our long love affair with movement, whether expressed through the waltz, tango, tarantella, or the unbridled joy and energy of a folk dance.

The concept behind Dance!, Hope tells Apple Music Classical, had been in the works a fair time. “It’s a journey that has taken me 20 years to put together,” he says, “but it was actually the best thing that could have happened, as I would not otherwise have met most of the people that appear on the album. Alongside the Zürcher Kammerorchester (Zurich Chamber Orchestra), of which Hope has been music director since 2016, Dance! now includes the incredible artistry of cimbalom player Jenö Lisztes, plus Omar Massa on bandoneon and harpist Marie-Pierre Langlamet. The journey has become longer, too. “Originally, we had 500 years of dance, but now it’s 700,” laughs Hope, “and it’s also now a double album. Actually, I could have easily made five or six. Dance really is that massive.”

Listening to the album, which takes us from 14th-century Italy to 20th-century Argentina, via Austria, France, the US, and England, is a powerful reminder that music can transcend time and place through sheer energy and originality. As Hope transports us back and forth across ages and cultures, we start to lose the notion that these pieces belong to any particular period. “Twentieth-century composers like Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and Bartók were musical pioneers—and Prokofiev set new levels and new standards in ballet and ballet music. But there’s nothing less intense about the 14th-century Lamento di Tristano. That’s where it starts,” says Hope of this arresting medieval piece. “It’s one of the earliest notated pieces of dance and it makes you sit up and take notice of it. But if you look at something like Orawa by Kilar, which was composed in the 1980s, you wouldn’t necessarily see a connection between them, and yet they’re both infiltrated by folk music, by folk musicians, by something that is otherworldly, perhaps even supernatural.”

As Hope suggests, the “danceability” of much of this music is surely down to the fact that many of the featured composers were passionate dancers themselves. “Mozart was dancing at the age of five in a theater in Salzburg. He danced all his life. Erwin Schulhoff danced every night in the nightclubs of Berlin and wrote to Alban Berg that he had a total and utter obsession with it. I was comforted by the fact that there’s something very visceral in a number of these compositions.” There’s no doubt, too, Louis XIV’s burning desire to dance was the inspiration behind one of the most joyous, infectiously rhythmic pieces on the album: Lully’s “Marche pour la cérémonie des Turques” from his 1670 ballet Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.

What these composers, and monarchs, were enjoying, however, were not necessarily the formal dances we see in period dramas or in engravings and paintings, but something much freer and more uninhibited. “That’s part of the reason the Catholic church banned most dancing from the 16th century onwards,” says Hope. “The sarabande, for instance, was considered to be obscene—it was unfitting that a man and a woman should get so close together and dance in an erotic nature. This was totally dangerous to the conformity of Europe. Similarly, the fandango, which originated in Latin America, caused a scandal in Europe, while people like Mozart picked it up and made it their own.”

Of course, these dances would be considered tame in today’s climate, but were there any pieces that took Hope by surprise? “Schubert just knocks me out every time,” he admits, “but the end of the 5 German Dances really is extraordinary, with its sense of dark brooding among the joy.” He mentions, too, the traditional Odessa Bulgar, which gave Hope the chance to play with an array of artists including Jenö Lisztes, a musician he regards as perhaps the greatest cimbalom player in the world. “This piece has this relentless energy that just explodes when those guys play. I was just really lucky enough to jump in with them.”

Does Hope indulge in a little dancing himself? “Badly!” he insists. “I love dancing and I do it extremely enthusiastically. I’ve always moved around while playing. I just feel a lot of this music and I noticed that it takes hold of me. Dance has always been inherent in the way I make music. I think if you can free your inhibitions, you can become a better dancer.”

42 Tracks

September 29, 2022 at PDT

Silvestrov

Valentin Silvestrov’s childhood in Kyiv was blighted by the horrors of war. Eighty years on, those horrors have returned, and the acclaimed Ukrainian composer has been forced to take refuge in Berlin. Daniel Hope and Alexey Botvinov, a native of Odesa, channel their heartfelt reflections on Silvestrov’s plight and Ukraine’s suffering into this album of Silvestrov’s hauntingly beautiful music for violin and piano. The duo include three of the composer’s seven Melodies of the Moments cycles, exquisitely crafted songs without words touched by gentle echoes of the past, and the grittier emotions of the Bach-inspired Hommage à J.S.B.. Their world premiere recording of Pastorales 2020, written to mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, strikes the ideal balance of bittersweet expression, while Botvinov’s intense communion with Nostalghia captures a nation’s grief.

24 Tracks

February 8, 2018 at PST

Journey to Mozart

A stylish player and imaginative programmer, Daniel Hope would never give us just a Mozart violin concerto album. Instead, as the title implies, he leads us towards the composer, putting him in context, and taking us down some intriguing and delightful byways. So, before Mozart’s ever-charming Third Concerto, he offers works by Gluck, Haydn, and Salomon. Coaxing crisp, sprightly playing from his Zurich Chamber Orchestra and contributing some impressive cadenzas, Hope offers a lovely collection—and the arrangement of the Rondo “alla turca” will make you smile with its box of musical tricks.

12 Tracks

November 19, 2020 at PST

Christmas with Hope - EP

4 Tracks

December 31, 2013 at PST

Escape To Paradise - The Hollywood Album

Classical music has defined what we hear when we go to the movies. Exploring the inextricable relationship between the traditions of European classical music and Hollywood soundtracks, British violinist Daniel Hope offers a sophisticated, beautiful collection with Escape to Paradise. Revealing the close connection between music from Austria and Germany and great film scores at the dawn of the moviemaking era, the album includes selections by exiled European composers such as Miklós Rózsa, John Waxman, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold—whose Violin Concerto in D Major is the album’s virtuosic centerpiece. Other highlights are drawn from contemporary classics such as Schindler’s List, American Beauty, and Cinema Paradiso. Collaborations with Sting and German singer Max Raabe (who perform songs by Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill) round out this exhilarating album of great cinematic music.

19 Tracks

December 31, 2008 at PST

Air - A Baroque Journey

24 Tracks

February 3, 2022 at PST

America

"American classical music has always been a fascinating melting pot of styles, from the spirituals and jazz of the Deep South to the European influences that Jewish composers escaping Nazi Germany brought with them to the US. On this album, violinist Daniel Hope invites classical and jazz musicians, including the great jazz pianist Marcus Roberts, to explore together the idea of “American” music. Here, there are new arrangements of Gershwin, a West Side Story Suite that breathes new life into Bernstein’s masterful music, Copland’s heartfelt portraits of the Appalachian idyll, and a flavor of Kurt Weill’s seductive cabaret music. Florence Price’s “Adoration,” in a version for solo violin and strings, lies at the album’s heart, a reminder of a composing talent that, until recently, lay unjustly neglected.

23 Tracks

April 19, 2015 at PDT

Brahms, Schumann, Mahler: Piano Quartets (Live)

Daniel Hope leads an ensemble of incredible musicians playing Romantic treasures.

9 Tracks

December 31, 2006 at PST

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto, Op. 64, Octet for Strings, Op. 20

12 Tracks

February 4, 2016 at PST

My Tribute to Yehudi Menuhin

The connection between violinist Daniel Hope and Yehudi Menuhin is deep—Hope’s family fled South Africa in the ‘70s because of their anti-apartheid views and landed on their feet when his mother got a job as a secretary for the master violinist. When Hope eventually launched his solo career, he toured the world under Menuhin’s baton. This deeply personal tribute comes to life with works that represent Menuhin's wide-ranging taste (everything from a gorgeous and lyrical Mendelssohn concerto to Steve Reich’s “Duet”). Hope is immaculate throughout, and particularly touching on Ravel’s “Kaddish,” which he played as an encore at the master violinist’s final concert.

23 Tracks

December 31, 2013 at PST

Max Richter: Berlin By Overnight (Remixes) - EP

5 Tracks

January 29, 2007 at PST

Clarke: Viola Music

14 Tracks

September 2, 2021 at PDT

Hope

Hope sprang directly from the lockdown experience of Daniel Hope, who worked tirelessly to keep the music going during those long, dark months. The celebrated violinist is the ultimate collaborative musician: Even with his own super-responsive Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Hope is a first among equals, and this album finds him bringing many of his musician friends back into the studio. Tracing an arc from Renaissance composer John Dowland to the recorded premiere of a piece by French-Lebanese composer Bechara El Khoury (“Byblos, the Old City”), Hope gives us music, fittingly, of optimism. It’s done beautifully, the glorious arrangement of Ariel Ramírez’s Misa Criolla—a work Hope has loved since his teens—taking center stage.

15 Tracks

December 31, 2005 at PST

Bach: Violin Concertos in A Minor & E Minor, Concerto for 2 Violins, Brandenburg Concerto No. 5

12 Tracks