Beethoven: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1-10 (Complete)

Acclaimed Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos makes his Decca Classics debut with the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas. A young artist of rare quality, Leonidas Kavakos won the Sibelius Violin Competition in 1985, when still in his teens and, three years later, the Paganini Competition.

Often described as “the violinist’s violinist”, Der Tagesspiegel wrote that Kavakos has “quite possibly the most beautiful violin tone imaginable”.

He has appeared with conductors including Riccardo Chailly, Valery Gergiev and Iván Fischer, and with the world’s major orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Gewandhausorchester, London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

After a recording of the great Mozart violin sonatas awarded a Diapason d’Or some years ago, Midori Seiler and Jos van Immerseel now present the complete Beethoven sonatas, with their dialogue between two instruments now on an equal footing, in which the partners have roles of the same importance.

Renaud Capuçon and Frank Braley have devoted much of their 2009-10 concert schedule to Beethoven’s complete sonatas for violin and piano. “These sonatas are full of memories for me,” says Capuçon. “The ‘Spring’ Sonata was the first piece of Beethoven I played, when I was ten years old. His music is a rite of passage for every violinist.”

This complete recording of Beethoven’s sonatas for violin and piano grows from a marathon performance project that Renaud Capuçon and Frank Braley launched in their native France in Summer 2009: some 50 concerts around Europe, all devoted to the Beethoven sonatas.

The BBC Music website has observed that: “Capuçon's style, perhaps because of his regular chamber work, is natural, understated and perceptive; the sound of a musician happily relaxed in his skin and not feeling the need to prove any virtuosic credentials.” Indeed, chamber music has always played a central role in his activities, and – beyond his cellist brother Gauthier – his regular partners include pianists Frank Braley and Nicholas Angelich, while his list of colleagues also includes such names as Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Hélène Grimaud, André Watts, Yefim Bronfman, Myung-Whun Chung, Stephen Kovacevich, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Vadim Repin, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Yuri Bashmet and Truls Mørk.

“The complete Beethoven is a major project for the next two years,” explained Capuçon to the newspaper Sud-Ouest in summer 2009. “We hadn’t yet performed the Beethoven sonatas in France and we will be taking them on a major European tour. They are a real marathon of three-and-a-half hours of music. We perform the ten sonatas in chronological order so that we can follow the composer’s evolution.

“These sonatas are full of memories for me. The ‘Spring’ Sonata was the first piece of Beethoven I played, when I was ten years old. His music is a rite of passage for every violinist. I wanted to perform the complete cycle before thinking about the Bach sonatas, which are the Everest of the repertoire.

“Beethoven gives you no place to hide in these sonatas. You have to find their spinal column, create a structure – and sing. Without wishing to appear pretentious, I’ve always felt at ease with Beethoven, more than with Schubert or Mozart. But it is for the public to judge.”

According to another French newspaper, La Provence, Capuçon and Braley “won over the public in triumphant fashion” at the festival of La Roque d'Anthéron with interpretations of Beethoven that were “fluid, precise, full of integrity … emphasising both the sweetness and energy of Beethoven … The two instruments established a delicious dialogue.”

Renaud Capuçon’s Virgin Classics recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, released in 2009, prompted the BBC Music Magazine to state that he “approaches the Beethoven Concerto very much like the great virtuosos of the past through emphasising the work’s lyrical and expressive qualities”. He and Braley have frequently performed together as a duo and their previous recordings of chamber music for Virgin Classics embrace Schubert (the ‘Trout’ Quintet and the Trios opp 99 & 100) and Ravel (the Piano Trio and Violin Sonata).

Lyrinx has long advocated the sound of ‘live’ performances in their recording, but recording such a monument as the integral set of Beethoven’s sonatas for violin & piano within three live performances set about one year at ‘La Criée’ National Theatre in Marseilles needed some nerve! Caroline Sageman and David Galoustov, the new duo in whom Lyrinx firmly believes, took up the challenge and the result sounds to us infinitely more alive (thus musical) than a studio recording, however perfect it may be.