Guillame Lekeu, Albéric Magnard: Sonates Pour Violon

Album review

Ar Re-Se's Lekeu/Magnard Sonates pour violon features Boston-based Romanian violinist Irina Muresanu and her regular duet partner, pianist Dana Ciocarlie, who is also Romanian, but based in France. These two violin sonatas complement one another well on CD, and it appears they have never before been combined in this way, although both sonatas have been used as filler for the famous Franck A major Violin Sonata. Both composers studied with Vincent d'Indy, both of these sonatas were premiered by the Belgian violinist Eugene Ysayë and both represent the French post-Romantic idiom in its finest hour. Irina Muresanu is superb in both these works, with a rich, sweet, full tone that does a measure of justice to Ysayë's style of interpretation -- she even makes judicious use of forbidden portamenti that is appropriate to the period and idiom of the music. Ciocarlie invests a lot of emotion into the piano parts, and while at times the piano seems a tad loud, it never overshadows Muresanu. The intensity of Ciocarlie's playing pays off dividends in the Magnard, which is given to abrupt shifts of mood and violent contrasts. Neither of these sonatas has been overexposed, and their pairing here is certainly welcome; about the only thing that seems wrong about Ar Re-Se's Sonates pour violon is the rather unattractive deconstructionist front cover image, but if that really offends, then you can simply turn the booklet around the "wrong" way. In every other respect, this will be of strong interest to the growing number of listeners interested in the late French Romantics.

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