This disc is a showcase for a special violin, the Lipinski Stradivari of 1715. Tartini once owned it (cue the Devil's Trill Sonata) and later Karol Lipinski, a rival of Paganini after whom it's now named and who knew Schumann (cue a Lipinski Caprice and Schumann's D minor Sonata). At the end of the 19th century, the leader of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Engelbert Röntgen, passed it on to his composer son Julius (represented by his Second Violin Sonata). Frank Almond, leader of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, plays everything on this disc with a slightly old-fashioned air, the concentration of tone conveying the message that he's in love not just with every twist and turn of the music but also every sound he can coax from his very special instrument.
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