MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS


Robert SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Violin Sonatas
No. 1 in A minor, Op. 105 (1851) [17:34]
No. 2 in D minor, Op. 121 (1851) [33:52]
No. 3 in A minor, Op. posth. (1853) [19:13]
Carolin Widmann (violin), Dénes Várjon (piano)
rec. August 2007, Auditorio Radio Svizzera, Lugano
ECM NEW SERIES 2047 (476 6744) [72:01]
Experience Classicsonline

Before receiving ECM’s new disc of the three Schumann Violin Sonatas, I’d almost forgotten how wonderful these works are. Violinist Carolin Widmann - sister to the clarinetist/ composer Jörg Widmann - reminds me vividly and energetically of that fact. There is no dearth of recordings, but no glut, either. For one, you really want a complete set of them - including the Third Sonata, (new Grove says WoO27, the Bärenreiter and Schott Urtext scores say WoO2), not just opp. 105 and 121. The last work Schumann composed before he decomposed three years later, it’s a sonata spotted with inspired, echt-Schumann moments. It took its final shape when Schumann added two more movements to the two (second and fourth movement) that he had already contributed to the “FAE-Sonata”. The latter was the sonata that he, Brahms (third movement), and Albert Dietrich (first movement) co-wrote for the birthday of Joseph Joachim.
 
Widmann and pianist Dénes Várjon are not household names, although collectors of Hungaroton releases might be familiar with the latter as part of the Takács Piano Trio and piano partner of Miklós Perényi. This recording shows Widmann and Várjon as fabulous musicians who are — particularly important in this repertoire — very well matched. Fleet and spunky, finding a good balance between assertive and lyrical, without overdoing either, Carolin Widmann navigates through sonatas every bit as securely as colleagues Marwood, Kremer, Faust & Co.
 
Gidon Kremer, who recorded the first two sonatas with Martha Argerich (DG), floats above the music, his slightly abbreviated phrases and beautifully contained violin sound seemingly unconcerned by gravity. Underneath him - sonically, though not interpretively - Argerich is her tempestuous best, bursting out at the seams, eager and independent-minded. The sonatas become two stories, Kremer’s and Argerich’s, and it’s ever titillating. Tempos change from one second to another, and movements like the third of op.105 (“Lively”) run along like mice on tip-toes. It’s a terrific way to interpret Schumann and even “incomplete” that disc should be on every well-stocked Schumann shelf.
 
Isabelle Faust and Silke Avenhaus on CPO (read Colin Clarke’s review here) offer all three sonatas and excellent performances, making it ECM’s primary competition. Like Kremer, Faust has a tendency towards clipped phrases, but her touch is not as soft as Kremer’s which gives her consistently fast readings a trace of aggression and restlessness. No one plays the second movement of op.121 so fast, though Widmann and Várjon come close and are even more rhythmically incisive. The dry acoustic allows for all details to come out. The balance between the instruments is perfectly even.
 
Compared to those accounts, Maria Egelhof and Mathias Weber (Thorofon) sound merely competent and sometimes even flatfooted (better in op.121 than op.105). On the other hand so do Alban Beikircher and Benedikt Koehlen (Arte Nova), who delight with a stunning slow movement in op.121. The closely recorded pizzicato beginning is particularly delightful.
 
Widmann/Várjon meanwhile are a more cohesive unit than any of the couples above. They are the most flexible with tempos, allowing themselves time to indulge (third movement of op.105 or first movement of op.121) and really stepping on it, too (second movement of op.121, Scherzo of WoO2). Widmann’s tone is particularly soft, her touch more supple even than Kremer’s. When fortissimo is asked for, she remains sonorous with no hint of screeching. And for the gorgeous third movement of op.121, they have something truly special in store. It begins with Carolin Widmann’s pizzicato that barely sounds like pizzicato and more like a spiccato sulla tastiera. It’s the most gentle way you’ll ever hear this movement opened — slow, but melodious and with forward movement that gracelessly plucked notes could never muster. According to Widmann, who is particularly fond of exploring new ways of treating pizzicatos lovingly, that movement started out as a casual after-dinner jam session. It was surreptitiously recorded by Manfred Eicher who sensed that something beautiful was going on. It was, said Widmann, a moment of music-making that comes very rarely; it doesn’t get any better that. She was talking about the moment itself, but the same could be said of the result.
 
Coincidentally it’s also the movement that works best in the resonant, not to say cavernous, Auditorio Radio Svizzera in Lugano. The acoustic is delightful, bordering lush to these ears — for the most part. Friends of a dry acoustic, though, might find the natural reverb of the ECM recording to be testing their limits. Both instruments come to the ears from a little further back than the closer recorded recordings of Kremer and Faust.
 
It’s my favorite recording of these works now, but it’s not perfect. What I find somewhat objectionable is the soft rumble in the bass that’s caused by every stomped foot, heavily pressed pedal, and every soundly rung low note on the piano. These low, ambient sounds feel as if someone upstairs is running about barefoot. On headphones that’s not a problem, nor at low levels, but with bass-rich speakers at neighbor-unfriendly levels it can be rather distracting. Fortunately that’s but a small caveat in light of all the goodness on this disc.
 
Jens F. Laurson
 

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.