Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100 (Meistersinger Sonata)

This CD presents a remarkable recording of the three sonatas for piano and violin by Johannes Brahms. They belong to the culmination points of the genre and match the quality of his three string quartets in every respect.

Rainer Schmidt (2nd. Violin in the famous Hagen-Quartet) and Saiko Sasaki are well established as a duo and with the Ravinia Piano-Trio. Both are well known in Japan, where they perform regularly and teach young artists and chamber music ensembles.

The three Violin Sonatas of Johannes Brahms are performed by a pair of rising stars of the international scene. Sponsored by Anne Sophie Mutter and her foundation as a student, violinist Linus Roth is now an award-winning soloist, whilst pianist José Gallardo appears regularly at major festivals around the world.

In 1992 violinist Linus Roth won First Prize at the German “Young Musician” competition”.

Later, whilst studying at the Music Academies of Zurich and Munich he received regular support from Anne-Sophie Mutter and her Foundation. In 2006 he received the Echo Klassik Award of the German Phonoacademy as “Best Newcomer” for his debut CD of sonatas by Brahms, Debussy, Ysaÿe and Mendelssohn, which was released on EMI Classics. José Gallardo has won many national and international awards and has appeared at many international festivals including the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, the Asiago Festival in Italy, the Schwetzingen Festival, and the Rheingau Music Festival. In 2009 Roth and Gallardo released a highly-praised account of Schumann’s Violin Sonatas on Challenge (CC72341).

Like the music of his Second Symphony, Brahms’ First Violin Sonata clearly reflects feelings of wellbeing with its lilting melodies and heartfelt middle movement. As with all three sonatas the violin dominates, but frequently leaves the lower sonorities and harmonics to the piano accompaniment. The mood of the Second Sonata there is also tender and warm, but the thematic structure is more concise, with textural references to three songs Brahms composed during that same period: Komm bald, Wie Melodien zieht es mir and Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer. The Third and last Violin Sonata was written in 1887 and was inspired by the breathtaking scenery surrounding Thun. Unlike the previous two sonatas it has four movements and is symphonic in scale.

Both in his memoirs and in conversation with the present writer, Stern named Myra Hess among the musicians who had influenced him. The two met in the summer of 1951 at the Casals Festival in Perpignan but it was not love at first sight, on Hess’s side at any rate. When their record company American Columbia, which largely underwrote the Casals Festival, suggested that Hess should record some chamber music at the 1952 event in Prades, she was grateful for the chance to renew collaboration with her old friend Szigeti but was not too keen to work with Stern. Once she started rehearsing Brahms’s B major trio with him and Casals, however, she realised how much she had in common with Stern. The trio was recorded and Hess also played and recorded the Schumann Quintet with Stern, Alexander Schneider, Milton Thomas and Paul Tortelier, as well as three works involving Szigeti: Schubert’s A major Sonata, Brahms’s C major Trio (with Casals) and C minor Piano Quartet (with Milton Katims and Tortelier).

These Prades encounters eventually led to the Hess-Stern duo which mainly appeared in New York, Edinburgh (at the Festival) and London. They initially played Brahms’s G major Sonata at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on 16 April 1956 in honour of the ninetieth birthday of David Mannes, founder of the Mannes College of Music: Stern began the recital with the Bach Chaconne and Hess ended it with Beethoven’s A flat Piano Sonata, Op.110. Thereafter they gave sporadic sonata recitals, the repertoire taking in all three by Brahms, as well as two by Bach, a few Beethovens and individual works by Mozart and Schubert. Although the duo was not recorded commercially, we do have this BBC transcription of what turned out to be their last recital, on 28 August 1960 at the fourteenth Edinburgh International Festival (a London appearance scheduled for that October had to be cancelled, owing to the heart attack which hastened the end of Hess’s career). To hear two such great romantic artists together is something of a privilege.

- Tully Potter, 2011

On this recording, Anne-Sophie Mutter, accompanied by pianist Lambert Orkis, shares her up-to-date thoughts on the Brahms Violin Sonatas that have been central to her repertoire from the start of her career.

These sonatas are among the most intense, emotionally penetrating works composed for the violin.

Second only to her solo repertoire, chamber music has been for Anne-Sophie Mutter an on-going passion and commitment. Her communion with Orkis’s pianism defines musical collaboration at its zenith.