Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann
Performer: Itzhak Perlman, Martha Argerich
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Warner
Catalogue: 9029593789
Release: 2016
Size: 233 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Schumann: Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor, Op. 105
01. I. Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck
02. II. Allegretto
03. III. Lebhaft
Schumann: Fantasiestücke, Op. 73
04. I. Zart und mit Ausdruck
05. II. Lebhaft, leicht
06. III. Rasch und mit Feuer
07. Brahms: Sonatensatz in C Minor, Op. posth. “FAE Sonata”: Scherzo
Bach: Sonata for Violin & Harpsichord No. 4 in C minor, BWV1017
08. I. Siciliano. Largo
09. II. Allegro
10. III. Adagio
11. IV. Allegro
Itzhak Perlman and Martha Argerich have recorded a historic first studio album together: it has been 18 years since their last album together, a live recital from the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. On that momentous occasion in 1998, the pair performed three of the 19th century’s most ambitious and enthralling works for violin and piano – Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, the Franck Violin Sonata and Schumann’s Violin Sonata No.1. The first two sonatas were released in 1999 by EMI Classics (now Warner Classics) in what was the pair’s only recording together until now.
“Working with Martha was a unique experience for me … Her brilliance and the colours she uses when she plays are recognisable as soon as you hear them – it’s her; nobody else sounds like that… I am so excited that we were actually able to record together again… When this possibility came along that she might be able to have a couple of days free to record I said, ‘I’ll go any place!’” Itzhak Perlman
Martha Argerich added: “I feel so stimulated to play with Itzhak, it’s really a feast – fantastic! It’s a very special relationship, I am completely enchanted.”
Here, on the very same album, are recordings made far apart in time by Martha Argerich and Itzhak Perlman: Schumann’s Sonata Op. 105. Live at a concert in Saratoga on 30th July 1998 represents the first meeting between the two giants of the music scene, whereas the rest of the programme was recorded as recently as March 2016. There is romanticism above all with Schumann and Brahms – of course, the only Scherzo movement is in the “F-A-E” Sonata, a work composed jointly between Schumann, Dietrich and Brahms, but movements are commonly played individually. Argerich and Perlman end with Bach’s Baroque romanticism with one of the sonatas for violin and keyboard, where Bach himself wrote out the keyboard part instead of leaving it as a continuo. Written thusly, the score is a duet among equals, and even more so when the equals in question are these two in particular.