Symfonische muziek

At a time when Mozart was writing his first sonatas for violin and clavier, in 1778, it was the done thing to write piano sonatas with violin accompaniment in which the violin part is fairly unobtrusive. The purpose of this was not to put off the target audience for the scores: educated amateurs. But Mozart paid no heed to this convention and took off into a new world with real duets, in which the two instruments found themselves on an even footing. At the same time, he avoided the corrective exaggeration which would appear in some scores which resembled violin concertos with a little piano support. Here we have a perfect balance between the two players: Isabelle Faust on the violin and Alexander Melnikov at the clavier. The latter of the two plays on a copy of a Viennese fortepiano made in 1795 by Anton Walter. The sound balance is utterly perfect, which is a relief, as all too often these sonatas either favour the keyboard part when played on the piano or the violinist tries to force it. We have here two sonatas written in Paris shortly after the death of Mozart's mother (who accompanied him on the journey), and then another from 1787 written in the wake of Leopold Mozart's death. Despite this the composer seems to be putting on a brave face, flashing a smile tinged with a tender nostalgia on the Sonata in E Minor K. 304. © SM/Qobuz

Vilde Frang’s Homage is more than a captivating programme of short pieces for violin and piano, it is also a homage to the players of the Golden Age of the Violin, such as Fritz Kreisler, Leopold Auer and Joseph Szigeti. Vilde Frang has conceived the album as something of a homage to her illustrious predecessors. Born in 1986, she is clearly very much a violinist of today, and – as a Norwegian trained in Germany – she did not grow up in the Central and Eastern-European tradition of Heifetz, Kreisler, Auer and Szigeti. That being said, she brings her own, distinctively captivating magic to her instrument. © Warner Classics

No-one could think that Edgar Moreau and David Kadouch had an easy job in selecting the programme for this album, which begins with the expansive and impressive Grand Dramatic Sonata (Grande sonate dramatique) "Titus et Bérénice", by Rita Strohl (1865-1941), a pseudonym of Aimée Marie Marguerite Mercédès Larousse La Villette, a French composer of the same vein as Franck or Saint-Saëns. Rita Strohl has gone down in history as an astounding character: she had the idea of creating a kind of French Bayreuth, La Grange, in Bièvres (!) with the support of Odilon Redon and a number of other artists of the day; it was done in aid of performing Rita's operas - monumental works, more than a match for any of the most colossal excesses of Scriabin: a Christian cycle, a Celtic cycle lasting five days, a Hindu cycle in seven. The sheer size of these projects was overwhelming, to say nothing of other troubles such as the start of the First World War and other personal troubles of Strohl's. All the same, this Sonata reveals in Strohl a figure bursting with talents and ideas, which Moreau and Kadouch bring to life with unstinting devotion. Poulenc's little-performed Sonata for Cello and Piano follows: a delicious taste of Poulenc's "light" output, which almost classes as salon music. The other great moment on the album is Franck's Sonata, as re-written by Jules Desart during the composer's lifetime. The album also offers a little rarity from Fernand de La Tombelle, one of the founding members of the Schola Cantorum, whose score relates to the work of Reynaldo Hahn. This ample album closes with a world-first Poulenc recording (such a thing is still possible!), Souvenirs. It is well-named: the piano part appears to recall (or prefigure) the dramas of Dialogues, while the cello, which only intervenes occasionally, shows off Poulenc's salon voice! © SM/Qobuz

Despite (or because of) composing some twenty-seven symphonies, Nikolai Myaskovsky (1881-1950) has practically been forgotten about. He was a student of Liadov and Rimsky-Korsakov and a friend of Prokofiev, but he never ventured far from his romantic style of writing even when it was fading in popularity. Despite this, he was a fantastic composer of instrumental music, as demonstrated by this First Sonata composed in 1911 which has since been revised several times. Its lyricism is perfectly suited to the cello’s rich sound that is so close to the human voice.As a finalist of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium, special prize winner at the Tchaikovsy Competition in Moscow and ADAMI Classical Musical Talent in Paris, Bruno Philippe has amassed a whole host of prizes and awards, but it is a desire to play music that motivates him rather than a desire for recognition. After an initial project dedicated to Brahms’ two Sonatas, he signed with Harmonia Mundi and released an album dedicated to Beethoven and Schubert. Here, he explores the work of Myaskovsky with pianist and composer Jérôme Ducros, however most of this new recording is dedicated to Rachmaninov and includes two of his early pieces, Prelude and Oriental Dance and the famous Sonata for Cello and Piano in G minor. As an added bonus Prelude in C sharp minor is also included, a piece which Jérôme Ducros clearly enjoys playing and which we certainly enjoy listening to. This piece was one of the main reasons for the composer’s worldwide fame even though it was unexpected and he would have been grateful just for some public recognition for his symphonies. © François Hudry/Qobuz

I present to you the violinist of the Chung family (actually, perhaps "dynasty" would be more precise). Born in 1948, Kyung-wha Chung's career started with a bang at the age of just ten. His youth proved no obstacle to starting his studies at the Juilliard school, but child-prodigy status carries with it a great risk: that of remaining a child. Chung dodged this particular error, and his adult career has blossomed on the world stage. Here he takes up the Franco-Belgian repertoire of Fauré and Franck: the former's First Sonata and the latter's sole Sonata are plainly the pillars of the album. Franck gave his to the world in 1886, but in fact Fauré's came first by a long way: it dates from 1876! And so the first of Fauré and the mature Franck confront each other on this record: both sharing the radiant tones of A major (on violin, the keys are much more clearly differentiated than they are on, say piano: some are much more striking, for technical reasons whose explanation can get a bit... technical); both are structured in four movements, but whereas one speaks of youth and fervour – in rather fashionable accents, too, perhaps – Franck's music shows a mellowing with age, broad, cyclical construction, and a precise way of giving each instrument an equal share weight in the discourse. Chung and pianist Kevin Kenner round off the programme with a few treats from the two composers, as well as a little Debussy and Elgar's Salut d'amour, which he wrote for his fiancée as an engagement present. © SM/Qobuz

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Although Nikolai Medtner's work for solo piano is reasonably well-known among fairly well-read music lovers, his music for violin and piano remains quite absent from concert halls and record collections. That's a real shame, because among them there are so many gems waiting to be discovered and enjoyed. Medtner, remember, might have been born in Russia in 1879, but he spent half his life in exile after the Revolution, first in America and then in England, where he would die in 1951; disinclined (to put it lightly) to follow the avant garde (including the avant-garde of Stravinsky or Debussy!), throughout his life he would be wedded to tonality, to melodic art, and the same tradition that Rachmaninov followed. His three great sonatas for violin and piano date respectively from 1904 for the First (revised before its first performance in 1911 but in its fundamentals it remains post-romantic); the Second only in 1925, while the composer was staying in France; the Third in 1939, written in his modest London dwelling – because Medtner spent the end of his career in almost-total obscurity, with the exception of the Maharajah of Mysore, an unstinting but sadly impotent champion of his music. The listener will note that as he advances in maturity, the composer increases the scope of his discourse, rather than reducing it: the First Sonata is only half as long as the Third, but we're not complaining. Alongside these three sonatas, Nikita Boriso-Glebsky on the violin and Ekaterina Derzhavina on the piano give us some other pieces by Medtner for the same group of instruments: the Canzonas and the Nachtgesänge ("night songs"), which underline just how much the melody was central to his conception of music. © SM/Qobuz