Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Francis Poulenc
Performer: Alasdair Beatson, Esther Hoppe
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Claves
Catalogue: CD1701
Release: 2017
Size: 638 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Mozart: Violin Sonata No. 18 in G major, K301
01. I. Allegro con spirito
02. II. Allegro
Mozart: Violin Sonata No. 21 in E minor, K304
03. I. Allegro
04. II. Tempo di minuetto
Poulenc: Violin Sonata, FP 119
05. I. Allegro con fuoco
06. II. Intermezzo. Très lent et calme
07. III. Presto tragico
Mozart: Sonata for Piano & Violin in B-Flat Major, K. 378
08. I. Allegro moderato
09 .II. Andantino sostenuto e cantabile
10. III. Rondeau. Allegro
Their account of the Poulenc [is] tense, dramatic and imaginative, with Beatson piling up huge, gothic crags of tone at the tragic climaxes and Hoppe glinting and whispering in the brooding central elegy for Lorca. Like everything else on this enjoyable but idiosyncratic disc, it’s certainly not short of character
Following a first album devoted to Mozart and Stravinsky, Esther Hoppe and Alasdair Beatson have again combined Mozart and the 20th century, this time with Poulenc and four works of Parisian inspiration. In 1763, Mozart’s family had a grand first visit to Paris: received by Louis XV on several occasions, young Wolfgang dazzled the king and the whole of his court. In 1778 Mozart returned to Paris with his mother; now 22 years old, the young man tried to be introduced to the court again, but the young prodigy had grown and was ignored by the nobility. Living in precarious conditions, lacking money and suffering from hunger, his mother died at the Rue du Sentier 6. It was in these tragic circumstances that Mozart composed one of those rare sonatas in a minor scale (K. 304). Dedicated to the Spanish poet Lorca, Poulenc’s Sonata is also marked by tragedy, as Ginette Neveu, who had first performed the work in 1943, was killed in a plane crash.