The Strad Recommends: Alda Dizdari: Robin Holloway

THE STRAD RECOMMENDS

The Strad Issue: February 2026

Description: A modern master shines brightly in these performances

Musicians: Alda Dizdari (violin) BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Alexander Walker

Works: Holloway: Violin Concerto; Solo Sonata

Catalogue number: RESONUS RES10370

There are a lot of building blocks in Robin Holloway’s one-movement Violin Concerto, dating from 1990. In musical analogies it reflects on the poetry of John Ashbury, the work’s dedicatee, and Rainer Maria Rilke’s set of poems Les fenêtres.

The Tiffany-style windows of Ashbury’s New York home provide further inspiration: a set of nine musical windows punctuates the work. One of Fauré’s songs finds a place as well.

Violinist Alda Dizdari, who gave the first performance of Holloway’s Solo Violin Sonata, also on this recording, ordered the score of the concerto during the Covid lockdown, and describes both of them as ‘the best works I have come across in years’.

She certainly has the measure of them, musically and technically. At the outset of the concerto she emerges high up dal niente and enters into an extended discourse with the orchestra, beautifully articulated. Her playing has constant fluid expression and emotional depth, whether in a rhythmically incisive scherzo or in the florid, lyrically twisting cadenza near the end.

It’s a wonderful performance of a fine piece, which deserves to be played more often. She weaves clear narrative lines though the four movements of the Solo Sonata, variously quixotic, sinuous, questioning, and dipping in and out of double-stops. It’s virtuoso stuff, played with grace and flair. The recording is clear and well balanced.

TIM HOMFRAY