Brahms's violin sonatas
Perlman and Ashkenazy: a classic Brahms programme
Gramophone Choice
Sonatas Nos 1-3
Itzhak Perlman (vn) Vladimir Ashkenazy (pf)
EMI Great Recordings of the Century 566893-2 (70‘ · DDD). Buy from Amazon
If anyone doubts that these three sonatas represent Brahms at his most blissfully lyrical, then this is an essential set to hear. The trouble-free happiness of these mellow inspirations, all written after the main body of Brahms’s orchestral music had been completed, comes over richly and seductively in these fine performances. In their sureness and flawless confidence, they carry you along cocooned in rich sound. Perlman consistently produces rich, full-bodied tone, an excellent illustration being the way that he evokes a happy, trouble-free mood in the melody which opens the second-movement Adagio of No 3. The obverse of this is that with such consistent richness and warmth, the three sonatas come to sound more alike than they usually do, or maybe should, a point which comes out the more from playing them in sequence. It’s true that Perlman does quite often play softly, but for some tastes he’s placed too close to the microphone, and the actual dynamic level stays rather high, however gently he’s playing. This isn’t to say that, with sharp imagination and superbly clean articulation from the pianist, these performances lack range of expression – in particular, there’s the rhythmic pointing, which gives a Hungarian or a Slavonic tang to such passages as the first contrasting episode in the ‘raindrop’ finale of No 1 or the contrasting vivace passages in the second movement of No 2, where the last pizzicato reprise is made totally delectable. These performances are both distinctive and authoritative. The recording is bright, with a good sense of atmosphere to give bite to the piano tone without diminishing the warmth of Perlman’s violin.
Additional Recommendation
Violin Sonatas Nos 1-3
Coupled with Sonata ‘FAE’ – Scherzo
Nikolaj Znaider (vn) Yefim Bronfman (pf)
RCA Red Seal 88697 06106-2 (71’ · DDD). Buy from Amazon
Brahms’s Op 78 Violin Sonata, the first of his three, comes closer to a work of some wistfulness, the opening phrase taking on, with Nikolaj Znaider and Yefim Bronfman, a gentle melancholy that suits the music well. The hesitancy of this dotted phrase marks the whole of the sonata’s invention, and is picked up with touching effect, as Clara Schumann was moved to find, when Brahms quotes an earlier song in the finale. This is all sensitively done.
So is the Second Sonata, with delightful touches: when the Andante gives way to a faster section, it is here played as gaily as a Brahms waltz, one that turns faintly spectral on its return with the pizzicato violin. Perhaps the finale, Presto agitato, deserves more extrovert agitation, but these are most thoughtful and sympathetic performances. There is also room on the disc for the lively scherzo which, as a young man, Brahms wrote for a composite sonata, with movements by Schumann and Albert Dietrich.
