Alina Ibragimova PAGANINI 24 Caprices

 

24 CAPRICES

 

Chiaroscuro Quartet JOSEPH HAYDN String Quartets Op. 76 | 4-6

 

STRING QUARTETS OP. 76 | 4-6

Alison Balsom MAGIC TRUMPET

MAGIC TRUMPET

 

Alina Ibragimova / Vladimir Jurowski / State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia SHOSTAKOVICH Violin Concertos

VIOLIN CONCERTOS

Chiaroscuro Quartet HAYDN "Sun" Quartets Op. 20 Nos. 4-6

                                                "SUN" QUARTETS Op. 20 Nos. 4-6

Chiaroscuro Quartet MOZART - MENDELSSOHN

                                                       MOZART - MENDELSSOHN

Chiaroscuro Quartet JOSEPH HAYDN String Quartets Op. 76 | 1-3

                                                    STRING QUARTETS Op. 76 | 1-3

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K10, K14, K30, K301, K304, K379, K481

Call me a killjoy, but my pulse rate rarely quickens at the prospect of Mozart’s pre-pubescent music. The three childhood works on these discs—essentially keyboard sonatas with discreet violin support—go through the rococo motions pleasantly enough. But amid the music’s chatter and trickle, only the doleful minore episode in the minuet finale of K30 and the carillon effects in the corresponding movement of K14 (enchantingly realised here) offer anything faintly individual. Still, it would be hard to imagine more persuasive performances than we have here from the ever-rewarding Tiberghien-Ibragimova duo: delicate without feyness, rhythmically buoyant (Tiberghien is careful not to let the ubiquitous Alberti figuration slip into auto-ripple) and never seeking to gild the lily with an alien sophistication.

The players likewise bring the crucial Mozartian gift of simplicity and lightness of touch (Ibragimova’s pure, sweet tone selectively warmed by vibrato) to the mature sonatas that frame each of the two discs. It was Mozart, with his genius for operatic-style dialogues, who first gave violin and keyboard equal billing in his accompanied sonatas; and as in their Beethoven sonata cycle (Wigmore Hall Live), Tiberghien and Ibragimova form a close, creative partnership, abetted by a perfect recorded balance (in most recordings I know the violin tends to dominate). ‘Every phrase tingles,’ I jotted down frivolously as I listened to the opening Allegro of the G major Sonata, K301, truly con spirito, as Mozart asks, and combining a subtle flexibility with an impish glee in the buffo repartee.
Tiberghien and Ibragimova take the opening Allegro of the E minor Sonata, K304, quite broadly, emphasising elegiac resignation over passionate agitation. But their concentrated intensity is compelling both here and in the withdrawn—yet never wilting—minuet. Especially memorable are Ibragimova’s chaste thread of tone in the dreamlike E major Trio, and Tiberghien’s questioning hesitancy when the plaintive Minuet theme returns, an octave lower, after the Trio.
In the G major Sonata, K379, rapidly composed for a Viennese concert mounted by Archbishop Colloredo just before Mozart jumped ship, Tiberghien and Ibragimova are aptly spacious in the rhapsodic introductory Adagio (how eloquently Tiberghien makes the keyboard sing here), and balance grace and fire in the tense G minor Allegro. In the variation finale their basic tempo sounds implausibly jaunty for Mozart’s prescribed Andantino cantabile, though objections fade with Tiberghien’s exquisite voicing of the contrapuntal strands in the first variation. I enjoyed the latest of the sonatas, K481, unreservedly, whether in the players’ exuberant give-and-take in the outer movements or their rapt, innig Adagio, where Ibragimova sustains and shades her dulcet lines like a thoroughbred lyric soprano. Having begun this review in grudging mode, I’ll end in the hope that these delightful, inventive performances presage a complete series of Mozart’s mature violin sonatas, with or without a smattering of childhood works. (Gramophone)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K11, K12, K302, K380, K526, K570, Variations K359

This revelatory series from Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien benefits from offsetting works of Mozart’s middle-period and maturity with some of his earliest compositions. One of the joys of this set, expertly played and annotated (by Misha Donat), is the way these outstanding artists subtly shade the two early sonatas of 1764, fully endorsing Mozart’s original instruction that they ‘can be played with the accompaniment of a violin or transverse flute’. Accordingly, Ibragimova moves in and out of the textures as though applying deft touches of colour and shading to Tiberghien’s musical canvas. Both players keep everything perfectly in scale, voicing the eight-year-old genius’s inspiration with a poetic radiance that captures the ingenuous mood to perfection.

K302 in E flat major (1778) combines thematic intensity—complete with pseudo-orchestral skyrocket crescendos over a recurring figuration—with a heart-warming lyrical glow. Tiberghien shapes Mozart’s sighing figurations and passing chromaticisms with a lilting temporal sensitivity, while Ibragimova uses vibrato sparingly, preferring to colour her tone with micro-inflected bow strokes of infinite subtlety. Their combined musical imagination feels so intertwined that it emerges seemingly as the natural extension of a single interpretative personality.

This sense of gentle ecstatic communion is nowhere more acutely sensed than in the sonata many consider the finest of the series: K526 in A major of August 1787. Once again, so keenly attuned are Tiberghien and Ibragimova to each other’s musical proclivities, that at the point of contact it is difficult to imagine this score being played any other way. (Julian Haylock / BBC Music Magazine)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K8, K13, K26, K28, K303, K377, K378, K403, Variations K360

Such was Mozart’s creative genius that even when, as here, sonatas composed 17 years apart are juxtaposed against one another, one barely experiences a creative jolt. It also underlines how successfully Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien immerse themselves in Mozart’s earliest published boyhood works as compared to the bracing genius of the music that poured forth during his mid-twenties. Those listeners used to the air of ‘greatness’ and expressive high-projection brought to the later works by Henryk Szeryng (Philips/Decca) and Itzhak Perlman (DG), in their very different ways, may initially feel a shade short-changed. Yet it is the Hyperion team who time and again demonstrate that a more intimate approach works wonders in capturing the essence of these exquisitely melodious and immaculately structured scores.

In the earliest work featured here, K8 in B flat, it feels as though centuries of interpretative accretion has been removed as Ibragimova and Tiberghien take flight in the opening Allegro with a bracing sense of forward momentum that creates the uncanny impression of floating on air. The tricky Minuet finale also goes like a dream, with no self-conscious pointing of the dance rhythms or furrowed-brow introspection when the music turns towards the minor key. By the time he composed the C major Sonata, K403, Mozart was interspersing major and minor modes with infinite more subtlety, and here the exquisite finesse of this cherishable team put them in a class apart. (Julian Haylock / BBC Music Magazine)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K27, K31, K296, K306, K454, K547

This seasoned duo's two-disc-for-one Mozart package takes in six works spanning more than 20 years from the two juvenile essays (K27, K31) of 1766 to his final sonata, K547 ('For Beginners'), of 1788. It is true to its 'for keyboard and violin' billing, because pianist Cédric Tiberghien's contribution sounds consistently more prominent than that of his partner. Such a recorded imbalance may be intentional, given the overall lesser significance of the violin part in most of these works; but it is a miscalculation in the more equitably matched K454, where Ibragimova seemingly underplays the grandeur of its introductory Largo and is too distant in its playful Allegro and jovial rondo. Even in the expressive, more violin-centric Andante, one begs a more balanced listening experience.

Nevertheless, these two outstanding Mozartians give characteristically intelligent, individual and invigorating accounts on modern instruments. They demonstrate unanimity of intent, refined musicianship, alert, vital phrasing and excellent timing; sample the buoyant rhythms and crisply articulated passagework of the outer movements of K296 and the honeyed cantilena of its Andante sostenuto. They bring out the full quirkiness of the two early sonatas, Ibragimova introducing some playful interpolations into the Allegro of K31. Both players skilfully characterise its Tempo di menuetto variations.

Their reading of K547 is persuasive, Ibragimova adding subtleties of nuance and rubato and occasionally taking some of the limelight. Her silky-toned, lyrical playing in the expressive central movement of K306 is an aural delight, and both protagonists revel in the humour, drama and sheer invention of the ensuing operatic finale. (Robin Stowell / The Strad)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K6, K7, K9, K15, K29, K305, K376,K402

Alina Ibragimova is, in many ways, an ideal interpreter for this double disc of (mainly) early Mozart sonatas. Ibragimova's interest in 'modern' as well as 'period-instrument' playing is reflected in a sensitive reading (here on modern instruments) and her sense of period taste conforms very much to current expectations of Mozart performance—the sound, delivered with immaculate cleanliness, is well-balanced and translucent, with sparing vibrato, intelligent, small-scale phrasing, and some fastidious pianism by Cédric Tiberghien.

The performances are extremely consistent technically and musically, but one might draw out, for example, the lively, clean voicing of the first movement of K402 and a thoughtful fugal second movement. The D major Sonata K7 includes a prescient slow movement, full of proto-Romantic gestures. The final A major Sonata ends the set with a well-known and loved work, delivered with aplomb.

There are few limitations here that can be voiced reasonably, although a little more fire might energise the rhetorical gestures in the B flat major Sonata's first movement. This really is splitting hairs, though, and such aspects create a more human connection with performances hat are otherwise almost too perfect to be fully relatable. Overal, however, this is a very enjoyable pair of discs. (David Milsom / The Strad)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien BRAHMS Violin Sonatas

‘Such a well-established and often inspirational musical partnership that I inevitably had high hopes for their Brahms sonatas, and I’m so happy to report that they were in no way disappointed. Right from the start (the first movement of the G major sonata), there’s a confessional intimacy that allows them to steadily build over the entire ten minute span of the first movement to a properly ecstatic conclusion rarely achieved as well as it is here. No extreme tempos, an unerring sense of give and take—you might be surprised how many estimable players don’t seem to know when to allow the other party to take the limelight. The climaxes are telling, without hectoring. They allow the music to speak eloquently, conversationally, surprisingly gently sometimes, and the recording is as well balanced as the playing. I have a handful of favourite recordings of the Brahms violin sonatas that will now have to shuffle up to make space for this one.’ (BBC Record Review)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien VIERNE - FRANCK Violin Sonatas YSAYE Poème élégiaque

While we’re not short of top-drawer recordings of Franck’s Violin Sonata, I’m still not sure whether I’ve ever encountered it sitting within such a musically and musicologically tempting programme as this one from Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien. Not, I might add, that the Franck Sonata should necessarily be seen as the main event here, despite its fame. Au contraire, one of the chief draws is the way it sits in equal balance within the whole, each work informing and being informed by its neighbours.

To deal first with the programming, all paths (or almost all paths) lead back to the great French violinist Eugène Ysaÿe: his Poème élégiaque of 1892, based on the tomb scene of Romeo and Juliet, followed by the Franck Sonata, which was a wedding present to him in 1886, and the 1908 Violin Sonata he commissioned from Franck’s fellow organist-composer Louis Vierne. Then a final petit four in the form of Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne, written only three years after the Vierne but ushering in a new era with its slightly leaner aesthetic and its final little quotation from Debussy’s L’après-midi d’une faune.

As for the actual sound, superb playing and ravishing engineering intertwine here to stunning effect. It’s a modern set-up – Ibragimova on a 1775 Anselmo Bellosio strung with metal, with Tiberghien on a very beautiful and relatively new Steinway D – and it serves as a reminder that you don’t necessarily need period instruments to bring a lightness and air-filled delineation to these densely textured late-Romantic works. (In fact, note here that if your personal taste is for something slightly lusher-textured or bigger-boned then you may wish to stick with Dumay and Pires, or perhaps Hadelich and Yang).

Still, listen to the sombre depth and steadily direct tone Ibragimova brings to the Poème élégiaque’s central grave et lent section, and the rich sonority of Tiberghien’s accompanying death knells. Or the gripping passion with which Ibragimova delivers both its soaring long lines and its virtuoso moments.

Moving on to the Franck, soak up the weightless, time-suspended softness with which they begin: from Ibragimova a sweet, even sound that’s light-toned without being lightweight, supported by a touch from Tiberghien at the keyboard that sounds like mellow, amber-hued raindrops, and all the while a gradual crescendo and strengthening of tone from both so subtle that it happens almost imperceptibly. Another joy is the expansive third movement with its succession of contrasts between crescendos to climaxes – which come long-spun, unegged and noble from Ibragimova – and the softest and sweetest of pianissimo dolcissimo interludes. Then after that, hear the further contrast provided by the final movement’s sunny-hued velocity.

The Vierne Allegro risoluto equally showcases sharper-edged energy, and yet more golden tenderness with its Andante sostenuto. Add the palette-cleansing Boulanger, and this is wall-to-wall wonderful. (Charlotte Gardner / Gramophone)

Chiaroscuro Quartet SCHUBERT String Quartets No. 14 in D minor - No. 9 in G minor

One of the truly iconic works in the repertoire for string quartet, Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden is named after the song which has lent its theme to the second movement. At the end of Matthias Claudius’s poem, which Schubert had set as a 20-year-old in 1817, Death cradles the Maiden in his bony embrace. And her fear, in the first verse, of encountering his tomb-cold touch is mirrored by his desire for her in the second. In Schubert’s life time, death was a constant presence in everyday life and even a young person like himself would have encountered it at close quarters – in fact, his own mother had passed away when he was only 15. 

When Schubert returns to the song in 1824 and starts work on the string quartet, death has nevertheless grown even more real: in the meantime he has become acquainted with pain and disease during the bouts of the syphilis that he knows will kill him. He turns the song into a set of variations, preceding it with a ferocious Allegro, and following it with a Scherzo and a Finale that have been described as ‘the dance of the demon fiddler’ and ‘a dance with death’. The acclaimed Chiaroscuro Quartet performs the work on gut strings, which brings out the vulnerability and desperation even further. The players then let us down gently with the youthful String Quartet No. 9 in G minor, a work in which the minor key offers Schubert the opportunity to play with light and shadows, rather than full-scale drama.

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien RAVEL Complete Music for Violin & Piano LEKEU Sonata

Maurice Ravel’s mature works for violin and piano have established a central place in the core recital repertoire and are considered among the most popular of the genre. These diverse works acknowledge the influences of a range of musical styles from jazz to Impressionism and fuse the tonal colours of Debussy with the lyricism of Franck.

The posthumously published one-movement Violin Sonata, written by Ravel as a student, is a lyrical precursor to the composer’s stunning Violin Sonata in G major with its unique character and adoption of the ‘blues’ idiom. The spontaneity, tonal colours and exotic soundscapes in Ravel’s violin music call for immense skill in interpretation, and passages in the frenzied Tzigane test the limits of the performers’ virtuosity.

Violinist Alina Ibragmiova rises to these challenges with extraordinary verve. Recent winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s prestigious ‘Young Artist of the Year’ award, she displays a vast expressive range and interpretative maturity. She is accompanied by pianist Cédric Tiberghien, who gives elegant and flawless performances and relishes Ravel’s iridescent piano parts.

The addition of Guillaume Lekeu’s masterwork, the extensive and engaging Violin Sonata, makes this major new release a chamber disc to treasure. (Hyperion Records)

Chiaroscuro Quartet BEETHOVEN - MOZART

The multinational Chiaroscuro Quartet promises performances of music of the Classical era "on period instruments informed by a historical approach." This tells you less than it would if applied to Baroque music, but the features of Classical-period historical string performance are in evidence here: vibrato is kept to a minimum, and the scooping accents possible on later instruments are scrupulously weeded out. The biggest surprise, however, would have been possible even played on contemporary instruments: the String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95, of Beethoven, designated by Beethoven as "Serioso," is given an interpretation with the seriousness radically scaled down. The group seems to be after a revisionist interpretation that holds that the violent qualities in this quartet were placed there by Romantic after-the-fact thinking and even later by psychoanalysis of Beethoven's difficult life around this time. The music is tense but light, with the really startling harmonic developments in the opening movement treated not as utterances of emotional torture but as little flashes of psychedelic light. The slow movements of all three works on the album are marvelous, with the players perfectly coordinated and the music seeming to breathe like some living creature, the lack of vibrato making the individual instruments difficult to pick out. And the Mozart Adagio and Fugue in C minor for string quartet, K. 546, and String Quartet in E flat major, K. 428 (a work also often given post-facto Romantic intensity) are less startling on first hearing. The Beethoven is one of those performances far enough outside the norm that it's safe to say some will think it's brilliant, some will hate it. But neither group will be able to claim it's not well thought out. (James Manheim)

Chiaroscuro Quartet MOZART - SCHUBERT

Formed in 2005, the Chiaroscuro Quartet consists of the violinists Alina Ibragimova (Russia) and Pablo Hernán Benedí (Spain), the Swedish violist Emilie Hörnlund and cellist Claire Thirion from France. Dubbed ‘a trailblazer for the authentic performance of High Classical chamber music’ in Gramophone, this highly international ensemble performs music of the Classical period on gut strings. The quartet’s unique sound – described in The Observer as ‘a shock to the ears of the best kind’ – is highly acclaimed by audiences and critics all over Europe, and is the fruit of its lithe and gracious playing combined with an extraordinarily committed ensemble mentality.  An acclaimed and growing discography includes recordings of music by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn.

The Chiaroscuro Quartet was a prize-winner of the German Förderpreis Deutschlandfunk/Musikfest Bremen in 2013 and received Germany’s most prestigious CD award, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik in 2015 for its latest recording of Mozart’s quartet in d-minor K421 and Mendelssohn’s 2nd string quartet in a-minor opus 13.

Among the ensemble’s chamber music partners are renowned artists such as Kristian Bezuidenhout, Nicolas Baldeyrou, Chen Halevi, Trevor Pinnock, Malcolm Bilson and Christophe Coin.

Recent engagements included their enthusiastically received debut concert at Vienna Konzerthaus and Philharmonie Warsaw. Other highlights in the past took the ensemble to the Edinburgh International Festival, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, London’s Wigmore Hall, Auditorio Nacional de Música Madrid, Music Festival Grafenegg, The Sage Gateshead (recorded for BBC Radio 3), Auditorium du Louvre Paris, Théâtre du Jeu-de-Paume in Aix-en-Provence, Grand Théâtre de Dijon, Gulbenkian Foundation Lisbon, West Cork Festival and for a residency to Aldeburgh.

In the season 2015/2016, the Chiaroscuro Quartet will appear on stage at Gulbenkian Foundation Lisbon, Amsterdam Concertgebouw or Sendesaal Bremen amongst others. The ensemble will also continue to perform Mozart's masterworks for piano and string quartet together with Kristian Bezuidenhout in leading concert halls such as Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Palau de la Música Barcelona, BR Munich, Meisterkonzerte Dresden, Kartause Ittingen and Bern. In April 2016 the quartet will embark on its first concert tour to Japan playing concerts in Tokyo and Hyogo.

Since 2009, the Chiaroscuro Quartet has been artist-in-residence in Port-Royal-des-Champs giving a concert series dedicated to Mozart’s string quartets.

Alina Ibragimova YSAŸE Sonatas for Solo Violin

Alina Ibragimova has made many fine recordings in recent years, but this solo Ysaÿe disc must count as one of her most memorable achievements. She gives full value to the sonatas’ varied expressive character, their virtuosity, and the imaginative and poetic way Ysaÿe wrote for his instrument. And she makes the music sound quite beautiful: we never feel the medium of unaccompanied violin is at all limiting; the sonatas speak to us unimpeded, without any sense of strain.

Ysaÿe composed the set in 1924, when his illustrious performing career was almost over. He dedicated each of the six to a different colleague among the fraternity of violinists, and we can follow their characteristics through the set—the First Sonata for Joseph Szigeti substantial and serious, and reflecting his prowess as a Bach interpreter; the Third Sonata commemorating the free, romantic style of Enescu, the Sixth Manuel Quiroga’s Spanish heritage, and so on. Ysaÿe sought in all six works to merge the Baroque tradition of solo violin-writing exemplified by Bach with the virtuoso styles of Paganini and Ernst, plus newer ways of writing of his own, leaning towards Impressionism.

At the start of the First Sonata (track 1) we notice Ibragimova’s deliberate, serious approach, characterised by strong dynamic contrasts and a powerful sense of line. The playing here communicates deep emotional involvement; and she’s equally successful in putting over the graceful, amabile character of the contrasting third movement (tr 3).

The Second Sonata, dedicated to Ysaÿe’s close friend Jacques Thibaud, might appear to contradict what we know of the latter’s easy-going nature and graceful playing, suggesting a darker side. The initial skittish quotation from Bach’s Third Partita for Solo Violin is set against obsessive repetitions of the ‘Dies irae’ chant, which continue throughout the sonata. Ibragimova is equally at home in the gentle, muted, melancholic second movement (tr 6) and the finale, ‘Les Furies’, which she attacks with extraordinary gusto (tr 8). Especially memorable here is the reintroduction of ‘Dies irae’ as a barely audible sul ponticello whisper (1'10"), contrasting with fiercely dissonant arpeggios.

With the single-movement Third Sonata, she draws a convincing distinction between the opening in recitative style, done very freely and as though improvised, and the main theme, held at a firm tempo. As the sonata nears its final climax (tr 9, 7'01"), there’s a sense of throwing caution to the wind, accomplished without any loss of tonal quality.

The Fourth Sonata is dedicated to Fritz Kreisler, with more Bachian echoes, as well as a nod to Kreisler’s interest in reviving—or composing in imitation of—more obscure 18th-century composers, with movements entitled Allemande and Sarabande. The first of these has an extremely slow tempo marking, which Ibragimova treats with freedom, allowing the movement’s different facets to come together to make a satisfying narrative. And in the moto perpetuo finale she makes full use of the varied bow strokes indicated (a tribute to Kreisler?), building up once more a cumulative sense of excitement towards the conclusion.

The Fifth Sonata is dedicated to Ysaÿe’s longtime friend and colleague Mathieu Crickboom. Its opening movement, ‘L’aurore’, is an Impressionistic depiction of dawn breaking, which allows Ibragimova to display a fantastic array of the quietest tone colours. She brings infectious rhythmic vitality to the ‘Danse rustique’ that follows.

As well as its Spanish idiom, the Sixth Sonata most clearly shows Ysaÿe as the heir to the great 19th-century virtuoso tradition—he had, after all, been a pupil of Wieniawski and Vieuxtemps. If we think of Ibragimova as a thoughtful, even scholarly player, here she proves herself adept at all the frequent showy tricks. Ysaÿe had a deeper purpose, of course: this piece’s sparkling surface is designed to portray an ardent character, full of extravagant gestures. And not only do the difficulties hold no terrors for Ibragimova, she also, as throughout the disc, gives a strong impression of having fun playing the music.

It seems very sad that none of the dedicatees of the Ysaÿe Sonatas made recordings of them. It may be that though Ysaÿe the great performer and teacher was revered, his compositions were not considered to be significant – it’s only in recent years that a handful of remarkable late chamber works have been unearthed and played. Whatever the reason, the Op 27 sonatas were virtually ignored until the LP era, and then it was individual works, most commonly No 3, that appeared on disc—with fine accounts by Oistrakh, Grumiaux, Rabin and Odnoposoff. Then came the first recordings of the whole set, by Ruggiero Ricci and Oscar Shumsky (whose 1982 performance is particularly commanding).

Since then, dozens of versions have appeared, giving the works the status of classics. Among them, I’ve always admired Leonidas Kavakos’s exceptionally clear, poised account from 1999. Then there’s Thomas Zehetmair, in 2004, playing with magnificent energy and commitment, and a feeling for the music and sense of fantasy that are different from Ibragimova’s but in no way inferior. However, she takes her place now as one of the most distinguished exponents of these fascinating works. (Gramophone)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien SCHUBERT Complete Works for Violin and Piano

The luminous partnership of Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien returns to Hyperion for this double album containing Schubert’s complete music for violin and piano. Their intelligence and technical prowess, their seamless and intimate connection as performers and their profound understanding of the music combine in magical performances.

While still in his teens, Schubert wrote four works for violin and piano that could have been given the label ‘sonata’, yet none of the four was published with that title. The first three, completed in 1816, bear instead the designation of ‘Sonatina’, perhaps to appeal to the amateur market. But these are highly accomplished works by the teenage composer and there is little ‘domestic’ feeling in the extended, mysterious unravellings of D385 which hint at compositions yet to come.

The later Violin Sonata in A major, D574 (now described as a ‘Duo’), urges the violinist on to greater virtuosic feats, and the Rondo in B minor even more so, with the piano sometimes treated as a surrogate orchestra. The extensive Fantasy in C major, written in the last year of Schubert’s life, is a masterpiece: the composer’s greatest achievement in this genre, which combines poignancy with sheer joy in life itself.

Beautiful and touching … the performances of the virtuoso Rondo brillant and Fantasie are exhilarating; the Rondo combining lively momentum with a sense of poise and the Fantasie beautifully characterised in all its varied aspects. Especially fine are the episodes in Hungarian style, full of energy and grace, and the barnstorming finale, rivalling the famous 1931 recording of Busch and Serkin' (Gramophone)