SESSION REPORT
SEIZING THE MOMENT
Bulgarian violinist Liya Petrova tells Emma Baker about how her new album pairing Korngold’s Violin Concerto with Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata came into being, and about striving for a sense of spontaneity
Sometimes one good idea sparks an even better one, which in turn goes in new and unexpected directions. Such was the case for Bulgarian violinist Liya Petrova’s latest recording project.Momentum 2, which features Korngold’s Violin Concerto op.35 and Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata op.18, is a follow-up to and near mirror image ofMomentum 1from 2023, which, in a similar format, pairs Walton’s Violin Concerto with Respighi’s Violin Sonata.
Petrova, whose career took off after she won first prize at the 2016 Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition, is no stranger to the recording process, Momentum 2 being her fifth album. She explains how the whole project was initially conceived as a single album encompassing two concertos: ‘It started with the idea of pairing the Walton and Korngold concertos – which is the obvious thing to do because both works were composed around the same time and both were premiered by Heifetz,’ she says.