Cast
Daniel Hope — Violinist
Schwedisches Radio-Symphonieorchester
Daniel Harding — Conductor
Sebastian Knauer — Pianist
Program notes
Follow Daniel Hope as he performs works by Felix Mendelssohn – from the composer's well-known Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64 to Suleika and Hexenlied.
Daniel Hope is an internationally reknowned violinist, whose childhood was marked by his relationship with Yehudi Menuhin, whose violin he now owns. "I started buying it when I was 15, and about 15 years later, it finally belonged to me," explained Daniel Hope to NPR.
Daniel Hope is familiar with Mendelssohn's music; he recorded the composer's Violin Concerto as well as various Lieder arranged for violin and piano in 2007 with the Chamber Orchestre of Europe and Thomas Hengelbrock. The Concerto for Violin in E Minor is probably one of the works that marked the most the young violinist's evolution, as he explained that as a child, he would refuse to play Bach and locked in the bathroom to try to play the concerto by himself.
This film features the first collaboration of Daniel Hope and Daniel Harding, although they have known and cherished each other for a long time. The film reveals pictures of the two sympathetic and charismatic musicians working as a team in such intimacy as it is seldom seen before. The aesthetics of the film take this into account with quick cuts, brushed the wrong way, which is unusual in classical music, and: it always stays close to the musicians.