A great musical partnership

The Complete Beethoven Sonatas for Violin & Piano; Sonatas by Fauré, Franck & Debussy

Here are more classic Beethoven recordings to lead us into the Big Beethoven Year of 2020, the 250th Anniversary of his birthday, on December 17, 1770. The Beethoven sonatas are studio recordings from 1958 and 1961, and it would be hard to find a better-matched duo for this repertoire. When Zino Francescatti and Robert Casadesus swap the lead and support roles at the beginning of the Spring Sonata, op. 24, you're hearing a marvellous musical partnership unfold.



The keynote here is freshness. Though the temperature is rather low, as likely to be measured as fiery, the two musicians always sound spontaneous, and even, when the music allows, joyous.  I was always convinced by their decisions, and swept along by the music. And what lovely music this is! Perhaps the violin sonatas aren't as serious and profound as the string quartet cycle, but my goodness, there are so many felicities in melody and rhythm, and such inventive conversations between the instruments. When you have two such impressive musicians as Francescatti and Casadesus, so intelligent, so sensitive, so lively, you can be sure you're hearing this music as the composer intended.

The three Beethoven CDs sound exceptional, as one would expect, since Holger Siedler, who did the remastering, had fine source tapes to work with. The fourth disc is much more of a mixed bag, sound-wise, though the music and the performances are wonderful. These sonatas by Fauré, Franck and Debussy are live recordings from 1947 to 1956. The bonus disc is much more than just an encore; it makes a perfect album even more impressive!

A fine violin sonata recital from Vancouver Island

This very fine violin and piano recital disc from Affetto features violinist Elmira Darvarova, who I know from her excellent Vernon Duke Violin Concerto disc from 2014, and pianist Shoko Inoue, who makes her home in my neck of the wooks: Oak Bay, British Columbia. Their Spring Sonata by Beethoven is very good: Inoue provides a solid basis for Darvarova to launch Beethoven's flights of fancy, but with enough rhythmic flexibility to keep things interesting. The violin tone is full but not placed too forward to ruin the special balance between instruments that Beethoven worked so hard to present. Their Franck Violin Sonata, one of the great works of the genre, is presented very much as a classical work, and I feel the loss of some of the passion Franck put into this music. I appreciate the desire to keep things from boiling over, but perhaps the heat isn't turned up quite high enough here. I have no qualms at all, though, with this version of Clara Schumann's 3 Romances, op. 22. This is Romantic music full of powerful emotions, tinged with sadness but bounded by Schumann's determination to live her very difficult life with dignity and good humour. Darvarova and Inoue's presentation of their well-chosen programme is warm and elegant and the Victoria-based studio recording is lifelike if a bit distant. This is from 2013, and the disc appeared since then at CDBaby, but it will be re-released on January 17, 2017. Watch for it!