A fresh vision of the English violin sonata
The Strad Issue: October 2026
Description: A fresh vision of the English violin sonata
Musicians: Michael Foyle (violin) Iain Burnside (piano)
Works: Adès: Suite from ‘The Tempest’. Elgar: Violin Sonata; Chanson de nuit; Chanson de matin. Walton: Violin Sonata
Catalogue number: DELPHIAN DCD34363
Wiry, sinewy, intense, urgently energetic: to say that Elgar’s Violin Sonata opens in the hands of Michael Foyle and Iain Burnside sounding a little less richly Romantic than usual is an understatement. But this thoroughly fits with the piece having been written in 1918, amid personal bereavement and international trauma. That intense blend of rhetoric, melancholy and lyricism can also be found in its partner works here – Walton’s Violin Sonata, written in the equally turbulent aftermath of World War II in 1947–9, around the time of the death of his partner Alice Wimborne, and Thomas Adès’s dramatic suite from his opera The Tempest.
Other highlights in the Elgar include the way the central Romance’s initial elfin mystery warms into something profound and fully human – more elderly lovers by the fireside than will-o’-the-wisp in the woods.
The Adès brings fast-switching, wide-ranging colours – try the duo’s tautly mesmeric way with Ariel’s ‘Full fathom five’. And the Walton unfolds with complete naturalness, the phrasing tilting so organically between long-lined lyricism and nimble conversation. The album closes with Elgar at his most intimate, his songs to night and morning expressed with touching simplicity.
CHARLOTTE GARDNER
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