Berlin, as James Jolly reported in his streaming feature (8/20), was the first major city to break the musical silence imposed by lockdown. From March 12, Igor Levit, returning from the grocery store, impulsively tweeted that he was going to stream a concert that evening from his apartment, a series that ran each night for 52 episodes. A fortnight later another Berlin resident, violinist Daniel Hope, began a similar enterprise.

‘Enterprise’ seems the right word. Whereas Levit’s Hauskonzert series was self-produced, streamed via his phone on Twitter, Hope was concerned about sound quality. He teamed up with Franco-German television company Arte – which broadcasts some incredible content, including the entire Salzburg Festival this year – and they turned his living room into a performance studio for a series of short recitals entitled Hope@Home. Working alongside pianist and arranger Christoph Israel as well as a number of guests, Hope played a wide range of repertoire, a representative sprinkling of which features on this DG album taken directly from those broadcasts.

‘Sometimes life doesn’t allow for second takes’, Hope writes, explaining that there was no patching or editing. It sounds pretty polished and professional, though, and the selection makes for an entertaining salon soirée. Hope’s silky violin tone suits these little gems, such as the glossy ‘La vie en rose’ or the first of Satie’s Gnossiennes. We’re mostly at the light-music end of the spectrum; I particularly enjoyed Israel’s arrangement of Weill’s ‘Youkali’ and a swooning rendition of ‘Moon River’.

Perhaps some high-profile salon guests were prevented from appearing on the album by their record contracts, but Matthias Goerne and Tamara Stefanovich perform Brahms and vocalists Max Raabe and Joy Denalane each join Hope, the former in a number from the 1932 film Ein blonder Traum. A number of actors appeared in Hope’s series but the only one to make it to disc is German actress Iris Berben, narrating Kipling’s ‘If’ over Manuel de Falla’s Asturiana, a poignant juxtaposition.

A pleasurable album, which should make a fine memento to those who followed the series as it unfolded online.