This release features rare recordings by two important female violinists: Adila Fachiri and Marie Soldat. Both of them studied with the great Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, and Adila Fachiri was his great-niece.

Adila Fachiri (1893-1962) was born in Budapest and inherited Joachim’s 1715 Strad. The two solo Bach movements reissued on this CD display her classical pedigree, but the most important recordings she made were those with the remarkable British musician Donald Francis Tovey (1875-1940). Renowned for his Essays in Musical Analysis, Tovey was dubbed by Joachim himself as ‘the greatest musician of our times, since Brahms’. In her recordings with Tovey, Fachiri noted that Tovey ‘preserved that freedom of rhythm which is not connected with time, but is the essence of all that makes a real musical genius’.

The artistry of Marie Soldat (1863-1955) is particularly because of her close friendship with Brahms. After hearing her play, the venerable composer invited her to give a concert with him and helped sponsor her studies with his friend Joachim. He was so impressed by her playing that he once said that her name Soldat (‘soldier’ in German) should be changed to General. Soldat had a long solo career that lasted until the Great War, when she eventually became the leader of an all-female string quartet that bore her name. Soldat’s only solo recordings are extremely rare and are among the most valuable aural documents from a nineteenth-century violinist. More importantly, they convey the loftiness and nobility of her musicianship.