Violin Bigginer

Duos don’t always have the temperament for the smouldering fires of Franck as well as the sudden whims of Debussy. Dumay and Pires join the select few. They take their time to find Debussy’s opening pulse, but they establish an individual, thoughtful freedom that ‘speaks’ sensuously and assertively. In the finale, they let unexpected passion grow from the central waltz, setting up a brilliant final flourish. Implicit in the initial, floated phrases of the Franck is a sense of the arduous journey to come. Intensity surges up by degrees towards the soul-torturing struggles at the sonata’s centre, and recedes before a gradual return of serenity and confidence.

Although Nathan Milstein hailed from Odessa, the cradle of Russian violin playing, his personal style was more classical and intellectual in approach than many of his colleagues. By the middle of the twentieth century he had become one of the most renowned violinists in the world, and he did as much as anyone else to imbue Bach's solo violin partitas and sonatas with the rather mystical aura they have presently. Milstein began to study violin at the age of seven. His first teacher was Pyotr Stolyarsky, who remained with him through 1914. Milstein's last recital as a Stolyarsky pupil included another promising student, the five-year-old David Oistrakh. Milstein then went to the St. Petersburg Conservatory to study with Leopold Auer.

The superb sound quality perfectly complements and supports Martzy's playing, which is thoroughly in the deep-and-involving end rather than the daring-and-scintillating end. There is not a sprung rhythm to be found. This is not Bach with a light touch. Vibrato is plentiful and beautiful. Movements end with "OK, I'm ending now!" ritardandos, which, however, are so well judged as to feel inevitable. Tone is gorgeous, technique assured to the point of transparency. The rhythms are 100% 1st-half-of-20th-century, and in that context are expressive and live.

Originally released in the 1980s as separate albums, Itzhak Perlman's recordings of Mozart's violin sonatas were reissued in this box set in 1991 as a special collector's edition. In these sonatas for keyboard and violin, the piano dominates as the violin often tags along in unison with the piano's melody, rarely departing from it except in an ornamental capacity. Even so, Perlman brings his customary good humor and energy to these pieces, and through his vibrant and spirited playing makes the violin's obbligato more or less equal to the pianist's elaborate part.

The superb sound quality perfectly complements and supports Martzy's playing, which is thoroughly in the deep-and-involving end rather than the daring-and-scintillating end. There is not a sprung rhythm to be found. This is not Bach with a light touch. Vibrato is plentiful and beautiful. Movements end with "OK, I'm ending now!" ritardandos, which, however, are so well judged as to feel inevitable. Tone is gorgeous, technique assured to the point of transparency. The rhythms are 100% 1st-half-of-20th-century, and in that context are expressive and live.

Although Nathan Milstein hailed from Odessa, the cradle of Russian violin playing, his personal style was more classical and intellectual in approach than many of his colleagues. By the middle of the twentieth century he had become one of the most renowned violinists in the world, and he did as much as anyone else to imbue Bach's solo violin partitas and sonatas with the rather mystical aura they have presently. Milstein began to study violin at the age of seven. His first teacher was Pyotr Stolyarsky, who remained with him through 1914. Milstein's last recital as a Stolyarsky pupil included another promising student, the five-year-old David Oistrakh. Milstein then went to the St. Petersburg Conservatory to study with Leopold Auer.

Bright, stylish, and lovely, Pamela Frank's recordings of Mozart's five Violin Concertos with David Zinman conducting the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra are surely among the best since Arthur Grumiaux's classic recordings with Colin Davis and the London Symphony of half a century ago. Frank's tone is lean but supple, her intonation is warm but pure, and her technique is second to none. Better yet, Frank's interpretations are ideally balanced between controlled intensity and singing expressivity, the balance that is the essence of Mozart's art. Zinman's accompaniments are themselves ideally balanced between supporting Frank and challenging her.

These sonatas for violin and continuo, dating from the court of the Holy Roman Empire in Innsbruck in 1660, are little known; perhaps the only other recording of them is a later one by their champion, Andrew Manze. If you like the woolly world of seventeenth century violin music, this composer belongs in your library. The later recording, which includes all the sonatas, lacks the theorbo heard in this 1992 performance, presumably reissued by Channel Classics in order to compete with Harmonia Mundi's release, but both are superb. The music's neglect is largely due to Pandolfi Mealli's obscurity; nothing is known of him beyond this group of works – not even whether a Sicilian composer named Pandolfi working around the same time was the same person or not.

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 superb sound quality perfectly complements and supports Martzy's playing, which is thoroughly in the deep-and-involving end rather than the daring-and-scintillating end. There is not a sprung rhythm to be found. This is not Bach with a light touch. Vibrato is plentiful and beautiful. Movements end with "OK, I'm ending now!" ritardandos, which, however, are so well judged as to feel inevitable. Tone is gorgeous, technique assured to the point of transparency. The rhythms are 100% 1st-half-of-20th-century, and in that context are expressive and live.