Now, Voyager, sail… (First Symphony), Op. 130 is Robert Groslot’s first symphony. The title refers to a poem by the American author Walt Whitman. And the “Scherzo” movement shares a link with the Beatles song, Getting Better from the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Groslot borrows musical motives and paraphrases them in his musical language.
A unique selling point of the present recording is that the solo part of the Violin Concerto is performed by German virtuoso Linus Roth. Roth received the prestigious ECHO KLASSIK Award in 2006 (as best newcomer) and in 2017 for his recording of the Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra. But he is also a tireless advocate of repertoire that has been unjustly neglected. Since Linus is almost exclusively responsible for the (re)discovery of Mieczysław Weinberg, a late Romantic composer whose music hovered on the brink of modernism, he is also a perfect fit for Groslot’s new concerto.