Saturday 23 July 2011

Brahms - Violin Sonata 3 [Belkin/Dalberto]

The saga of my ongoing love affair with these Violin Sonatas continues, last month it was the Second Sonata [6th June 2011], and now it's the turn of the Third, cast in four movements than the usual three, this disc is quickly establishing itself as one of my best Brahms Violin Sonatas that i own.

Boris Belkin is Russian, born in 1948, he recorded this disc in 1994, the visuals for this disc are absolutely excellent, i like the seven little vignettes of Belkin & Dalberto, all with a blue tinge, everything well laid out and pleasing.

The work is in D Minor, and the first movement has that aching sadness about it, but in contrast the second movement is in glorious D Major, sweet after the sour, it's soothing and refreshing, and yet Brahms can never get away from a tinge of regret in his music, but there's certainly a number of knots untied after the gripping first movement, i must admit this second movement actually sounds fairly slow, so i compared it to some other discs i have,

Chung / Frankl - 4:01
Mullova / Anderszewski - 4:04
Mutter / Weissenberg - 4:18
Znaider / Bronfman - 4:29
Belkin / Dalberto - 4:33
Amoyal / Roge - 4:36
Spivakov / Ghindin - 4:42
Dumay / Pires - 4:46
Perlman / Ashkenazy - 4:52
Frank / Serkin - 6:00

actually it's fairly average, the Perlman / Ashkenazy 'sounds' faster, and the Frank / Serkin works out to be a snail!, Belkin starts with a ravishing deeply felt lyricism [0:00+], and later he repeats the beginning slightly faster [2:09+], with the Pianist Dalberto playing a more complex version of the accompaniment, which turns really quite rhapsodic [2:57+ & 3:16+], wonderfully soothing.  

Here's Leonidas Kavakos playing the second movement Adagio on YouTube.