Anton Steck - Beethoven & Pössinger: Violin Concertos (2017) [HDTracks]

Award-winning German violinist Anton Steck joins Matthew Halls and the Baroque chamber orchestra L’arpa festante on violin concertos by Viennese composer Franz Alexander Pssinger and his friend Beethoven. Steck presents the world premiere of Pssinger’s concerto, written in 1805, just one year before Beethoven’s popular concerto. It took Beethoven’s work more than three decades to conquer the concert hall, ultimately gaining its popularity through two printed revisions published in Vienna and in London, which both reveal substantial changes in the solo parts. The quest for Beethoven’s “original version” proves to be extremely complicated, as Beethoven himself offered up to four alternatives to the soloists in some spots of the manuscript. A study of the different inks and quills used in that autograph allowed Steck to propose the unusual version recorded here, a tangible and transparent rendering of a famous piece thanks to the use of historical instruments.