An inspired partnership brings these works alive
THE STRAD RECOMMENDS
The Strad Issue: November 2025
Description: An inspired partnership brings these works alive
Musicians: Frank Peter Zimmermann (violin) Dmytro Choni (piano)
Works: Bartók: Violin Sonatas nos.1 and 2. Szymanowski: Mythes
Catalogue number: BIS BIS-2787 (SACD)
When Bartók was writing these sonatas, he was trying to emulate the alluring cantilena style of the works’ dedicatee, Jelly d’Arányi. Frank Peter Zimmermann is equally magical in capturing a singing line, creating lucidity in in a barely tonal path of heightened Expressionistic Romanticism.
Reviewing the premiere of the First Sonata (1921) in the New Age literary magazine, a critic suggested that Bartók was several rungs ahead of the audience, but that the public needed to educate their ears.
Over a century after it was written, this work still remains challenging both harmonically and in the density of writing. But the intensity of Zimmermann’s rendition, from the whispering Debussyesque moments of the slow movement to the Hungarian rhythmic drive in the folk-driven Allegro, ensures we are fully on board.
Szymanowski’s perfumed yet harmonically pungent Impressionism in Mythes is given an intoxicating characterisation, Dmytro Choni’s palette of colours matching Zimmerman’s soaring lyricism. ’Narcisse’ is wonderfully fluid with a mirror reflection in the water eloquently depicted.
Szymanowski’s new sounds were highly influential on Bartók’s Second Sonata (1922) which displays a more improvisatory structure, a flexibility to which these artists respond, without sacrificing a sense of momentum. The range of colour and mood is again dazzling in a partnership that is so empathetic that it sounds almost as if we are listening to only one performer. All in all, a marvellous disc.
JOANNE TALBOT
No comments yet