Hannah Cho: Brahms, Mozart, Schubert

The Strad Issue: November 2026

Description: A homage to Vienna offers an attractive calling card

Musicians: Hannah Cho (violin) Srebra Gelleva (piano)

Works: Brahms: Violin Sonata no.3 in D minor op.103. Mozart: Violin Sonata no.21 in E minor K304. Schubert: Violin Sonata in A major D574

Catalogue number: GRAMOLA 99373

Hannah Cho was born in Korea but trained in New York and now resides in Vienna, where she is a member of the State Opera and Philharmonic orchestras. She pays tribute to her adopted city in an attractive sequence of music by three composers associated with the Austrian capital, opening with Mozart’s heartbroken E minor Sonata, perhaps reflecting the aftermath of his first romantic disappointments in Mannheim, via Schubert’s Grand Duo, in which his unique voice emerges for the first time in his violin music, to Brahms’s final work for the medium.

The performances are attractive, too, Cho’s warm tone especially winning in the Mozart. As the music’s scale expands, though, her responses to its greater range of moods feels a touch constrained: the Schubert seems a little too polite in the extrovert music of the Scherzo or the closing Allegro vivace. And at a time when we are blessed with a near avalanche of exceptional Brahms sonata recordings – Ehnes/Armstrong and Wan/Richard-Hamelin notable among the most recent – Cho’s D minor is perhaps better appreciated for her lyrical ardour and appreciation of the work’s architecture than as the manifestation of an assertive violin personality. Srebra Gelleva is an attentive partner throughout and this debut album as a whole emerges as more than merely an appealing and well-programmed calling card.

DAVID THREASHER