Violin Piano

On FANTASY FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO, composer Benjamin Shorstein examines the age-old rules and conventions of musical form and structure and transforms them into inspirational foundations on which to build narratives. The improvisational Fantasy for Violin and Piano begins Shorstein’s story with an exploration of emotion and character, as each instrument formlessly weaves and wanders between themes—a sentiment that continues with Sonata for Piano, which extends the album’s musical worldbuilding, expanding upon an original theme that remains warm and sensitive as it gains intensity. The dance-based partita is also interpreted anew by Shorstein, as he uses the violin to explore the coexistence of melody and dissonance within self-expression.

Playing the 1716 Booth Stradivari, violinist Arabella Steinbacher plays Johannes Brahms’s three Violin Sonatas, as well as the Scherzo he contributed to the FAE Sonata, with a prepossessing tonal command, captured and reproduced by PentaTone’s engineers, who have balanced both performers close up yet communicating a sense of the venue’s spaciousness (the recording took place in September 2000, at the Concertboerderij Valthermond). In the Vivace ma non troppo of Brahms’s First Violin Sonata, Steinbacher mixes strength and tenderness, exhibiting a wide dynamic range that the recorded sound has transmitted to the listeners. Robert Kulek’s introduction and accompanying figures at the second movement’s opening also reverberate warmly in the ambiance underneath Steinbacher’s sound, especially thick and honeyed in these passages (even at times recalling Mischa Elman’s fabled tone).

Zornitsa Ilarionova, violinist, studied with world-renowned professor, Zakhar Bron, at the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid. She also studied with prominent international violinist Mario Hossen at New Bulgarian University, Sofia, as well as with Pavel Vernikov at 'Santa Cecilia' Music Academy in Bergamo.

Bridging the end of Romanticism and the beginnings of Modernism, Gabriel Fauré is considered to be one of the most important French composers of the nineteenth and early- twentieth centuries. His music is a testament to the seismic changes that he lived through, undoubtedly reflected in his distinctive writing. This collection of Fauré’s works for violin and piano are performed on period instruments: an 1890s Érard piano and a violin by Guaneri, recreating the composer’s sound world. Duo Jane Gordon (violin) and Jan Rautio (piano) here celebrate their significant milestone of two decades of musical partnership, having collaborated together on hundreds of artistic projects.

Bridging the end of Romanticism and the beginnings of Modernism, Gabriel Fauré is considered to be one of the most important French composers of the nineteenth and early- twentieth centuries. His music is a testament to the seismic changes that he lived through, undoubtedly reflected in his distinctive writing. This collection of Fauré’s works for violin and piano are performed on period instruments: an 1890s Érard piano and a violin by Guarneri, recreating the composer’s sound world. Duo Jane Gordon (violin) and Jan Rautio (piano) here celebrate their significant milestone of two decades of musical partnership, having collaborated together on hundreds of artistic projects.