Franck & Strauss: Violin Sonatas

Album review

The late-Romantic pairing of Richard Strauss and César Franck isn't a common one, but that's part of the charm of this masterly release by Belgian violinist Augustin Dumay and Quebec pianist Louis Lortie: they shift gears effortlessly between two very different modes of expression. As they might have been in a recital of 100 years ago, the two major sonatas are accompanied by smaller works by each composer. The Strauss Violin Sonata in E flat major, Op. 18, was a work long championed by Jascha Heifetz, whose Apollonian style is effectively suggested by Dumay here. The work hovers right on the lip of the composer's mature style, which, once achieved, would preclude his writing much more chamber music; lengthy, irregular, and increasingly dissonant diversions erupt from the pleasant main themes. The Franck Violin Sonata in A major, of 1886, is an especially intricate exemplar of the composer's tendency toward cyclical form, which here ties together a work with a remarkable collection of shifting emotions. The stormy middle movement demands a role for Lortie far beyond that of simple accompanist, and he steps up in an intense performance. Dumay here takes on the mantle of the nobly emotive classic French-Belgian style and never flags. These works are popular enough, but this is not in any way a fashionable program. It is, however, one that takes its place in a grand tradition.

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