Romantic Violin

Viktoria Mullova’s first album of Beethoven Violin Sonatas, Nos 3 & 9’Kreutzer’ with Kristian Bezuidenhout, was reviewed enthusiastically by Gramophone magazine. ‘ The sound, in these familiar pieces has a startling clarity’; it went on to say that the period instruments ‘relocate these two works in a darkly Romantic sound world’. For the next volume in a complete cycle, Viktoria is partnered by Alasdair Beatson in the strange and gnomic 4th sonata, the popular 5th ‘Spring’ sonata and the dramatic 7th – Beethoven in C Minor mood – always exciting and turbulent!

In the 41 - year gap between these two sonatas Fauré, increasingly beset by deafness, withdrew into a more private, recondite world all his own. The Second, in consequence, has never enjoyed the popularity of the First—and in fact was conspicuous by its absence from the CD catalogue until this welcome new release. Collectors may recall that when Lydia Mordkovitch and Gerhard Oppitz recorded the First for Chandos they preferred to couple it with Richard Strauss's early Sonata in E flat. Comparison of the two teams in the A major Sonata, Op. 13, leaves me in no doubt that the newcomers would be my first choice. In saying that, I don't want to underestimate Mordkovitch. But with her fine-spun, silken tone and sensitively tapered phrasing she is far too often overpowered by Oppitz, who in the resonant acoustic of St Luke's Church, Chelsea, emerges not only too loud but also rather too often the victim of his own over-generously used right pedal. The Cologne venue accorded to Mintz and Bronfman is kinder: though anything but timid Bronfman preserves far greater textural clarity, and never allows his piano to outweigh Mintz's violin unless at the composer's own behest.(Gramophone, 1/1988)

Bringing together Brahms's three Sonatas for violin and piano is both an obvious choice and a challenge. Obvious because, as all three come from the composer's mature works, they share a similarity of inspiration – nature, the voice – and aesthetics; a challenge because each, however, has its own character and expression, the first melancholy, the last dramatic and the second lyrical and exalted. By placing them side by side, Sergey Ostrovsky and Natalia Morozova dive into Brahmsian interiority, all the facets of which the musicians capture with infinite delicacy.

It seems, and was, ages ago that I last reviewed a disc of Estonian Heino Eller's orchestral music. That disc from Bella Musica-Antes is still worth hunting down as it overlaps with this Ondine example only in relation to the single-movement 24-minute violin concerto. The Ondine recording is unflinchingly forward and vivid. Eller's Violin Concerto has about it much the same rhapsodic air as the concertos by Delius and Moeran and RVW's Lark.

The idea of recording all three Brahms sonatas came to us quite spontaneously. Olivier Roberti and I had played them together and thought: Why not? There was no lengthy deliberation, just the will to do it. And so it quickly took shape and we organised ourselves quickly. We had to organise the recording equipment, hire a piano and set the date, all of which required a certain amount of planning. In the end, the recordings took place at Conjoux Castle in Belgium - just like my previous recording with Natalia Kovalzon, with whom I form the duo Natalia.

Two leading artists team up and bring together a selection of violin and piano masterpieces, performed in an outstanding and insightful way. Debussy’s sonata, composed in the last years of the French composer’s life, is full of sensuosity, while Janáček’s four-movement sonata is full of nationalistic feelings and of intense fragmentary gestures. The recording closes with Richard Strauss’s monumental and overtly romantic sonata, composed by the great German composer when still in his early twenties. We can unashamedly say that Iturriagagoitia and Bagaría give one of the finest performances of these works and we truly believe this recording is a must have!

After her last two albums of completely new compositions, “Silfra” and “In 27 Pieces – The Hilary Hahn Encores”, Hilary returns with classic-romantic repertoire. Two-times Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn now combines Mozart’s beloved Concerto in A, K 219 – with its fiery “Turkish” episode – with the rich, virtuosic romanticism of Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No. 4.