Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst Bundle

The fifth instalment in our series which documents, for the first time ever, the complete music of Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst.

Each CD in the series is planned by the Ernst biographer Mark Rowe and is intended to demonstrate the variety of Ernst’s music. This latest disc in the series shows him operating on both large — and small-scale, in two substantial variation sets and the grandiose Polonaise de Concert, and in the pyrotechnical display pieces – often based on operatic originals – intended to show off his virtuoso technique.

Ernst’s life (1812–65) was cut short by illness, but the magnificence of his playing echoed down the ages after him, Joseph Joachim (no mean violinist himself, after all) felt that “Ernst was the greatest violinist I ever heard […]. He became my ideal of a performer, even surpassing in many respects the ideal I had imagined for myself.” Berlioz agreed: “Ernst, who is a great musician as well as a great violinist (as well as being the most delightfully humorous man I know) is the complete rounded artist, profoundly and predominantly expressive in everything he does”.