The British violinist Daniel Hope’s debut disc for Warner Classics pairs the Berg and Britten violin concertos performed with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Hope’s friend and chamber music partner, Paul Watkins, formerly the Orchestra’s principal cellist.

The Berg Concerto is a world premiere recording. Because Alban Berg died before the first performance of his Violin Concerto, he was not able to correct the score after it had been prepared by the copyist. The work has been performed and recorded many times since its premiere in 1935 but when the Berg scholar Professor Douglas Jarman compared the commonly-accepted score with the original manuscript, he found over 50 errors. Consequently he was commissioned by the Alban Berg Foundation to prepare a new edition from the original manuscript which was then premiered by Daniel Hope in Vienna in 1996.

The Concerto was composed in memory of Manon Gropius - daughter of Alma Mahler Gropius and Walter Gropius - who died suddenly at the age of 18. The second work on this CD, Benjamin Britten’s violin concerto, was composed as a memorial to victims of the Spanish Civil War.