COMPOSERS: Brahms
LABELS: Virgin
ALBUM TITLE: Brahms - violin sonatas
WORKS: Violin Sonata No. 1; Violin Sonata No. 2; Violin Sonata No. 3
PERFORMER: Renaud Capuçon (violin)Nicholas Angelich (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: 545 7312
Competing versions of these three
sonatas are legion (think of such
classics as Szeryng and Rubinstein’s
recording on RCA, or Suk and
Katchen’s on Decca), yet I greatly
enjoyed this beautifully recorded
new account. More precisely, I
enjoyed the A major, and was even
more enthused by the D minor.
In these two works Renaud
Capuçon and Nicholas Angelich
are absolutely inside the music,
completely responsive to the play
of expressive light and shade, and
the way this goes hand in glove
with the unmatched intricacy and
vitality of Brahms’s rhythmic sense.
They can be warmly expressive,
with Capuçon unfolding a rich
yet intimate cantabile (as in the
first movement of the A major, or
the D minor’s slow movement),
yet powerfully driven (as in their
thrilling account of the D minor’s
finale, and more subtly in their
articulation of that sonata’s plangent
first-movement development).
The G major is beautifully done,
of course, but the players subscribe
to the unfortunate modern tendency
to take its tempos too slow, and
spin it out to wring every last drop
of loveliness from it (forgetting
that Brahms first conceived it as
a sonatina for his godson Felix
Schumann to learn the violin
with). If everything was up to the
standard of the D minor (which is
superb), the disc would merit five
stars. As it is, it doesn’t quite match
the Schlomo Mintz/Itamar Golan
version from Avie which I recently
reviewed (in the May edition), nor
yet my long-standing preferred
version of Augustin Dumay and
Maria João Pires, which while
never going to emotional extremes
gets across the lyrical and dramatic
essence of these works with the
utmost cogency and minimum of
fuss. Nonetheless, this new release
can be safely recommended.
Calum MacDonald