James Ehnes: Brahms, Schumann

The Strad Issue: February 2025

Description: A violin master swaps instruments, to beguiling effect

Musicians: Brahms: Viola Sonatas op.120 nos.1 and 2; Wiegenlied. Schumann: Märchenbilder op.113

Works: James Ehnes (viola) Andrew Armstrong (piano)

Catalogue number: ONYX 4256

This is the eighth release on Onyx for James Ehnes and Andrew Armstrong, but Ehnes’s first on viola; on it he plays the 1696 ‘Archinto’ Stradivari.

Both artists clearly have a devotion to Brahms and an interpretative consensus that serves the music’s warm lyricism and buoyant momentum while, in Armstrong’s case, conveying its textural density without tending to saturation.

There’s lightness and grace in the finale of the E flat Sonata (no.2); the theme gives rise to a sense of fantasy in the ensuing variations; the same goes for the Ländler-like Allegretto grazioso of the F minor First Sonata (in whose Trio section Armstrong releases delicate shards of alternating octaves). The outermost movements of the First Sonata are not brisk, but what may be lost in speed is made up for in depth.

There may be others who offer greater lyrical beauty in the Brahms, but Ehnes’s connection with the idiom is without question. Schumann’s Märchenbilder (‘Fairy-Tale Pictures’) makes a neat complement, the first of which underlines a storytelling mood while the vivid third picture extends a vivid, Expressionistic vigour seemingly continuing where Schubert’s Lied ‘Erlkönig’ left off.

The pair conclude with Brahms’s ‘Wiegenlied’. Too cheesy an ending? Maybe, but they do it with a charm and sincerity that avoids schmaltz.

EDWARD BHESANIA