(2016)
Bis
For their first album, some artists might feature repertoire they performed to win an international competition; others might select rarely heard works. But Kerson Leong chose still another route: a series of encores treasured by violinists of both years past and today. "I find that sometimes you can say a lot with very little. I thought that encores, which anyone can relate to, could be the ideal way to introduce myself," he states in an interview.
Kerson Leong carefully handpicked the works. "I looked at Heifetz' and Kreisler's transcriptions and wanted also to introduce some pieces that people may not have heard as much". For example, the haunting Hebrew Melody by Arnold Schoenberg's friend Joseph Yulyevich Achron, a favourite of Jascha Heifetz, or Medtner's Fairy Tale, a piece his accomplice Philip Chiu knows well in its original version for piano. "I wanted to balance flavours, to juxtapose lesser-known pieces with some that people would instantly recognize and could relate to.”
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Reviews
“Kerson Leong reveals that his aim for his debut album is ‘to balance flavours, to juxtapose lesser-known pieces with some that people would instantly recognise and could relate’. In its modest ambition, the disc succeeds admirably.”
— Gramophone
“… from the very first bars of the opening track it’s clear that this is a very special violinist with qualities that lift him from the general crowd and place him in the stratosphere.”
— The Whole Note