Powerful advocacy makes the best case for a mixed bag
The Strad Issue: November 2025
Description: Powerful advocacy makes the best case for a mixed bag
Musicians: ARC Ensemble
Works: Kanitz: Violin Sonata; String Quartet; Solo Cello Sonata; Concertino; Sonata Californiana
Catalogue number: CHANDOS CHAN 20374
Prior to the Anschluss, Ernest Kanitz’s works were cutting a dash in Vienna, with several performances in the 1920s and 1930s given by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately, his Jewish background made emigration to America inevitable, where he successfully attained prestigious teaching posts. But his music remains largely unknown today, so it’s good to encounter these eloquent premiere recordings of chamber works which range from the early neo-Romantic Violin Sonata to the more acerbic Concertino.
Each movement of the Violin Sonata (1921) features so many changes of mood and tempo that it can be difficult to grasp its musical argument. Nevertheless, violinist Anna Štube and pianist Kevin Ahfat do a fine job in drawing as lucid a path as possible through a work with a tendency to meander.
The later Solo Cello Sonata has a rhythmically punchy opening, delivered with verve and definition by Thomas Wiebe. This robust inflection oscillates with a gentler melodic pattern. The melodic vein continues in the second movement, but the thematic material here is not particularly distinctive.
Perhaps the most impressive work is the String Quartet: the melodic line in its Elegy is persuasive, and sensitively delivered, betraying perhaps a Viennese nostalgia which also infuses the third movement. As before, stellar performances from the ARC Ensemble offer the best possible case for reappraising this neglected composer.
JOANNE TALBOT
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