Mozart & Beethoven: Violin Sonatas

Chronique

This is violinist Ji Young Lim’s debut recording, a captivating programme of sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven. She is partnered by pianist Dong Hyek Lim, who launched his relationship with Warner Classics with a Chopin recital in 2015. (Both musicians are from South Korea, but they are not related – that they share a surname is coincidence.) Also in 2015, shortly after Ji Young Lim triumphed in the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels – one of the most prestigious events of its kind – she gave a recital in Washington, D.C. where she was greeted with a standing ovation. In the words of the Washington Post, her programme – which included Mozart’s Sonata No. 18, the opening item on this disc – “showed off an impressive arsenal of strengths — a range of colors that extended from a brilliant shimmer on top … to an almost viola-like richness and graininess on the bottom, the ability to race from one end of the finger-board to the other with a tap dancer’s agility and precision, a dramatic flair and an inclination to risk-taking that allowed her to revel in a funky, bluesy note-bending for her Gershwin encore.”

All three Mozart sonatas (Nos. 18, 21 and 26) date from 1778-79, a troubled period that was marked above all by the death of the young composer’s mother during an unhappy voyage to Paris. “This music seems so simple, joyful and charming,” says Ji Young Lim, “but there are more emotions inside … Mozart is the composer who is closest to me. He is always there, waiting.” Nos. 18 and 21 belong to the set of ‘Palatine’ Sonatas that Mozart dedicated to Marie Elisabeth, Electress of the Palatinate, a region in western Germany. All the sonatas are characterised by a real partnership between the two instruments, as is the case for the Beethoven's Sonata No. 1 in D Major. It dates from the late 1790s, when Beethoven was not yet 30 years old, and is still Classical, even rather Mozartian in spirit, but the composer’s powerful personality shines through. Ji Young Lim describes it as “a good match” for the three works by Mozart. Aptly, in view of the genial interaction between the instruments in all these works, Dong Hyek Lim describes his first-time collaboration with his compatriot as “easy and joyful”. © Warner Classics