Beethoven
Violin Sonatas Nos 3, 7 & 8
Antje Weithaas (violin), Dénes Várjon (piano)
CAvi-music AVI8553535 63:49 mins
A significant point is made in the liner note to this album, pertaining to the fact that part of these works’ originality lay in their balance between the instruments. Publishing an early violin composition by Beethoven, Artaria included the phrase ‘avec un Violino ad libitum’, reflecting the then-conventional view that the string part was dispensable. The composer’s response, on seeing a proof, was an irate instruction that ‘as the violin part is inseparably connected with the pianoforte part… this should be worded “avec un Violon obligate”.’ In other words, there should be parity of importance between the instruments – as there emphatically is in the scoring.
Antje Weithaas and Dénes Várjon are releasing their complete set of Beethoven’s violin sonatas in an order which allows each album to reflect the composer’s development, hence the seemingly random order here. The Allegro con spirito of the third sonata – Op. 12 No 3 – is permeated by a bounding optimism which this pair nicely catch, and they bring out the poetry of the Adagio cantabile, darkening the piano’s bass to let the violin sing out in a ghostly manner.
The two Op. 30 works emerged while Beethoven was wrestling with his growing deafness – he wrote his Heiligenstadt Testament a few months later – and the temper of the opening movement of Op. 30 No 2 is a testament of a different kind – heroic and confident – which these musicians handle nicely. But their rendition of the tender Adagio is ponderous, with the intricate interlacing of the instruments insufficiently smooth; and in the scherzo the piano sometimes almost drowns the violin.
Is that the fault of the sound recordist? The second movement of the eighth sonata has more than a touch of the same problem. Here Weithaas and Várjon left me wanting more than they gave – more poise, colour and character; they didn’t touch my heart. Afterwards I went back to the historic recording made by Yehudi Menuhin and Louis Kentner in 1956, which possessed all those qualities in abundance. Michael Church