Tiberghien

Liszt, according to the great British pianist John Ogdon, was responsible for ‘breaking the Germanic stranglehold on nineteenth-century composers, and scattering the seeds of modern music almost literally to the four winds. His music shows an avant-garde attitude to the problems of composing which was without parallel in the nineteenth century.’

The recordings of Mozart's works for piano and violin (as the packaging puts it, with historical accuracy) by pianist Cédric Tiberghien and violinist Alina Ibragimova roll on, with continuing impressive results. This volume is representative of the series, for those who are looking to try out just one album. As with the earlier albums, the program includes a strong complement of works from Mozart's childhood, and Ibragimova and Tiberghien work wonders with these.

This disc contains some of Szymanowski’s most overtly sensual and vividly gestural music; his lush, exotic textures intensified and crystallized in miniature. From the early Violin Sonata in D minor onwards, evidence of the composer’s unusual brilliance in writing for solo violin is paramount. The Romance in D major Op 23 (1910), first performed in Warsaw in April 1913, already reveals a considerable advance towards the exotic, strangely inward exaltation of mature works. In the extraordinary Mythes (1915).

The preeminent violin and piano partnership of Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien give matchless accounts of Brahms's three Violin Sonatas. The works, which reveal the composer at his most lyrically reflective, are coupled with a fabulous encore by Clara Schumann.

This double-CD group of Mozart violin-and-piano sonatas can stand on its own, and the title merely reads Mozart Violin Sonatas. It is, however, the third installment in a consistently fine Mozart cycle from pianist Cédric Tiberghien and violinist Alina Ibragimova. Deeper in the graphics the sonatas are denoted as being "for keyboard and violin," and indeed it is the keyboard that plays the dominant role even as the ways in which Mozart shakes up this configuration is part of the interest.