Isabelle van Keulen once again proves her skill and musical insight both as a violinist and as a violist on one of Challenge Classics highlights of 2018. Recorded live, van Keulen has paired two great concertos from the roaring 20s: Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto no.1 and Walton’s Viola Concerto.

Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto no.1, whose premiere was in 1923 (while the composer was still living in France, a few years before his return to Soviet Union) served as a much-admired model to Walton’s Viola Concerto, whose first performance was played by Paul Hindemith in 1929. The similarities between the two works go beyond the three-movements structure slow-quick-slow and concern themes, accompaniments and the rondo form of the virtuoso central Scherzo.

The idea of such unusual coupling came to one of the few great living violinists who can really play the viola with equal skill: Isabelle van Keulen. This glorious disc is crowned by the orchestral version of Vaughan Williams’s masterpiece The Lark Ascending. One of German radio best orchestras, the NDR Radiophilharmonie, is conducted by Andrew Manze (Prokofiev), Keri-Lynn Wilson (Walton) and Andrew Litton (Vaughan Williams).