Ulf Wallin and Roland Pöntinen began their Reger violin
project well over a decade ago for CPO (1
and 5) and the final instalment maintains the high standards
already established. In fact Wallin has recently recorded the
Violin Concerto, and he must be about the composer’s most
devoted disciple amongst living fiddle players.
This disc presents the second and third sonatas. The Second
was completed in 1892 and proves to be a very lyrical, tender
and Brahmsian effusion. The piano chording is especially
Brahmsian, and those passages where the piano’s Late Romantic
self-confidence meets the violin’s relative reticence
prove the most ingenious and interesting; the space where weight
and feathery reserve meet generating a fruitful tension. Of
the inner two movements, there’s a touch of folklore in
the B section of the Scherzo, and a charming and ingratiating
slow movement - where dynamics are intelligently deployed by
both musicians. The finale is confident, with an even more swaggering
B section.
The Third Sonata followed seven years later. Reger himself told
a critic that ‘it was a very difficult work to understand’.
This clearly relates to the profusion of ideas and incidents
coupled with an occasionally rather aggressive stance. Even
though the opening movement is in fairly clear sonata form,
it teems with ideas that seem to coil and twist around without
proper thematic resolution. Such doubts are (temporarily, at
least) swept aside by the droll, brilliant fugato in the Intermezzo
and the warm, sometimes even passionate slow movement where
Wallin’s deft portamenti pay dividends. The finale offers
the most overt evidence of Brahms’s influence, whilst
Reger revisits earlier thematic material in a structurally superior
way.
The Op.87 pieces were written in 1905 and form a strong, indeed
strange contrast. No.1 is a slight, small-scale Albumblatt
whereas the Romanze is over twelve minutes in length
and oddly constructed. It opens with a long piano introduction,
sounding not unlike one of Brahms’s late Opp.118 or 119
piano pieces. When the violin enters the moody quotient increases,
and a turbulent and romantically intense spirit predominates.
The performances, as noted, are in every way outstanding, as
is the recording. Both men offer the genuine Regerian experience
in this series, not least in this disc.
Jonathan Woolf
Ulf Wallin (violin) 