Andrew Wan: Brahms

The Strad Issue: July 2026

Description: Playing of lyrical warmth characterises these violin classics

Musicians: Andrew Wan (violin) Charles Richard-Hamelin (piano)

Works: Brahms: Violin Sonatas nos.1–3

Catalogue number: ANALEKTA AN29027

Andrew Wan gently coaxes out the opening of Brahms’s First Violin Sonata, and so establishes an immediate intimacy; he also puts his warm, mellifluous touch to winning use in the second subject. The music floats along, genial and eloquent. The rich melodic playing in the Adagio is beautifully shaped and all but seamless, though in the finale, however, such preponderant smoothness of line rather works against Brahms’s crisp dotted rhythms, with their myriad semiquaver rests.

Wan’s warm, legato style is ideally suited to the opening movement of the A major Second Sonata, with its Allegro amabile marking, and here the dotted rhythm motifs have an appropriate military snap. The second movement, Andante tranquillo, has a feeling of dreamy timelessness, nicely balanced by the graceful dance of the central Vivace, which on subsequent appearances has a bustling energy. In the Allegro grazioso finale, the diminished 7th passages have real drama amid their convivial surroundings.

The D minor Third Sonata occupies a more complex emotional landscape than its colleagues. Here, there is muscular playing, with sudden vivid contrasts and dramatic urgency in the opening Allegro. The second-movement Adagio is steadily paced, and the third, Un poco presto, has a nervy restlessness before the impetuous dash of the finale’s Presto agitato. The violin has a warmth in the recorded sound which is not always matched by the piano.

TIM HOMFRAY