Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, Op. 24 'Spring'

Sarah Kapustin gained a Masters degree in violin performance at the Juilliard School. She has performed duo recitals with Jeannette Koekkoek for several years and they recently performed the Beethoven sonata cycle to great acclaim in Italy at Pieve a Castello and at the Indiana University Summer Music Festival.

Robert Mann, violinist, conductor, and composer, has been a driving force in the world of American chamber music for more than fifty years. He is, in the words of Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe, ‘one of the country’s most admired and deeply loved musicians.’

Stephen Hough studied with Gordon Green and Derrick Wyndham at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK and with Adele Marcus at the Julliard School. Since his highly acclaimed New York Recital debut in 1984 Stephen Hough has become one of the World’s most recognised and admired performers.

Johann van Beethoven first became aware of his son Ludwig's aptitude for music when the latter was amusing himself by 'scraping at' a violin. After lessons from his father, the boy was also taught by his cousin Franz Rovantini and became a string player of sufficient skill to play the viola in the Bonn opera orchestra from 1789 onwards. Between the ages of 20 and 24 he set down on paper his earliest compositions for violin and keyboard: a sonata in A major that remained unpublished (Hess 46), 12 variations on an aria from Le nozze di Figaro published in 1793 (WoO 40), a rondo in G major written in 1794 but only released to Simrock for publication much later, in 1808 (WoO 41), and six German dances composed in Prague in 1796 for the Countesses Thun (WoO 42). However, these pieces cannot rival the ten sonatas for violin and piano composed between 1797 and 1812 which Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov have long cherished the prospect of recording. The behind-the-scenes bonus documentary filmed on this occasion, gives an insight into the impressive work on documentation and interpretation that enabled them to get as close as possible to the composer's intentions.

Violinist Barbara Govatos and pianist Marcantonio Barone have partnered on Beethoven’s sonatas for many years. Govatos is a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Barone is a leading soloist and chamber musician, most active in the Philadelphia area. Together they perform Beethoven’s complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano on a new recording for Bridge.

Even in today’s overfed and crowded market a new recording of Beethoven’s complete violin sonatas is an event.The ten sonatas, spanning the biggest part of Beethoven’s creative life, count among his best works, from the youthful exuberance and wit of the early Op. 12 sonatas, via the magnificent Kreutzer Sonata of symphonic proportions and content, to the benign calm en resignation of the last sonata Op. 96. Kristóf Baráti is one of the most exciting violinists of the younger generation.

After winning several important prizes (top-3 prize winner of the Elizabeth Competition when he was 18 years old, first prize at the prestigious Paganini Competition in Moscow) he is building an international career, playing with important orchestras and conductors (Ivan Fischer, Charles Dutoit, Marek Janovski, Kurt Masur). Klára Würtz needs little introduction to Brilliant Classics fans: her many recordings (Mozart, Schubert, Schumann) show an exceptional artist, with a natural musical instinct, effortless virtuosity and heart-warming charisma. New recordings, liner notes newly written by one of the most famous musical writers/journalists in America, Harris Goldsmith.

Sonatas for piano with violin, Beethoven thought of them, and the early set of three Op.12 does seem to look back towards the early Classical, even late-Baroque emphasis on the multi-voiced part to which the violin adds emphasis or decoration as required. But the genre matured with Beethoven, and by the time of the ‘Kreutzer’ he was composing a fullyfledged, pre-Romantic virtuoso journey for the combination, vast in breadth of expression and length. These works have always attracted great artists, but every generation must come to them afresh, and here are two superb musicians from Hungary to add their own approach: on ‘traditional’ rather than ‘period’ instruments but interpretatively untrammelled by one or another performing dogma. Klára Würtz has made many fine recordings for Brilliant, of solo, chamber and concerto repertoire; Kristóf Baráti may be a less familiar name but, according to conductor Charles Dutoit, he is ‘musically, technically wonderful’.