Jennifer Koh

Renowned violinists Jennifer Koh and her distinguished mentor Jaime Laredo illuminate captivating connections between student and teacher, and composers across the centuries, in Two x Four, an album of four double-violin concertos, performed with the Curtis 20/21 Ensemble conducted by Vinay Parameswaran.

The compositional touchstone is J.S. Bach's Violin Concerto in D minor, BWV 1043, an innovative work that introduced new ways for two solo violins to converse with each other and with orchestra.

Koh and Laredo leap from the Baroque to the late 20th-century for Philip Glass's attractive, hypnotically undulating Echorus on the theme of compassion. It was written for the great Yehudi Menuhin and his protégé, Edna Mitchell.

Two new works commissioned expressly for the project receive world premiere recordings. Anna Clyne's impressionistic Prince of Clouds is "a winner . . . . This is music one can listen to again and again and find new things to appreciate each time" (Chicago Tribune). David Ludwig's evocative Seasons Lost, a contemporary counterpart to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, is "full of beautiful ideas contrasting with playful/menacing Vivaldian gestures" (Philadelphia Inquirer).