Yuuko Shiokawa: Brahms, Schumann

The Strad Issue: February 2025

Description: A husband-and-wife team fail to ignite in passionless performances

Musicians: Brahms: Violin Sonata no.1. Schumann: Violin Sonata no.2

Works: Yuuko Shiokawa (violin) András Schiff (piano)

Catalogue number: ECM 4875878

This is the third release on ECM by wife-and-husband duo Yuuko Shiokawa and András Schiff, and it covers ground in which Schiff especially is highly regarded. But if some might consider his readings of Brahms and Schumann temperate rather than impassioned, Shiokawa’s playing here dials that down even further.

Brahms’s First Violin Sonata turns out to be a hard place to start. Though the playing is technically accomplished, as throughout the disc, Shiokawa doesn’t seize the themes expressively, so she appears rhetorically on the back foot from the start. The emotional temperature is not only low but also relatively static: as a result, there’s little outward contrast when she dips into accompanying the piano.

Brahms’s second movement is short on mystery in the first section and the choice to float the first part of the coda non vibrato comes out of the blue in a performance that doesn’t otherwise treat colour as an expressive device. The same non vibrato treatment occurs in the first movement of the Schumann sonata which, to me, renders it more like Haydn. But the Schumann comes off better, even if the scherzo is relatively deliberate compared to some lighter alternatives.

Neither player is what you’d call effusive, but that doesn’t mean this is a convincing meeting of minds.

EDWARD BHESANIA