Josef Spacek:Gordon Back - Ernst: Erlkonig

The Moravian Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst is a dazzling example of the nineteenth-century violinist-composer, of whom the greatest was Ernst's sometime rival, Paganini. Indeed it was the Italian who persuaded Ernst to follow the life of a touring virtuoso, in which role he was to perform with the greatest musicians in Europe, earning the admiration of men such as Chopin and Mendelssohn. The El�gie sur la mort d'un objet ch�ri, mentioned by Tolstoy in The Kreutzer Sonata, was one of the best-known violin works of the century, and the Polyphonic Studies offer a compendium of violin technique on a par with the works of Paganini himself.