Sz 8.7.2023

This new recording marks the reformation of the legendary duo of Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Fazil Say. The Moldovan violinist says the Turkish pianist ‘is a volcano, with an indomitable strength and energy’, while he emphasises the ‘freedom’ that her ‘spontaneous playing’ exudes: ‘At each concert, she creates a different character and tells a new story.’ The explosive duo presents a programme devoted to Bartók’s Violin Sonata no.1 (‘a marvel from start to finish, one of his finest works’, says Patkop), Brahms’s D minor Sonata (‘I imagine a feather in flight at the opening of the sonata’) and Janáček’s Sonata, ‘an extreme work, wounded and heart-rending’.

This powerful New Series album represents “a résumé and a departure” for Thomas Zehetmair, a summing up of his work with the Royal Northern Sinfonia. In his years as Music Director of the British chamber orchestra, Zehetmair was noted both for bringing compelling new music into the repertoire and for insightful performances of classical and modern composition, qualities very much in evidence on this concert recording from The Sage, Gateshead. The album opens with John Casken’s double concerto That Subtle Knot, written in 2012-3 for Zehetmair, Ruth Killius and the Northern Sinfonia. Inspired by the poetry of John Donne, the composition establishes a broad arc between the English Renaissance and music of today. Ruth Killius shines in a revelatory performance of Bartók’s Viola Concerto, and Zehetmair as conductor fully brings out what liner note writer Giselher Schubert describes as “the juggernaut propulsive thrust” of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.