A New Schubert Violin Music Project from BIS Records

Courtesy of Naxos of America

Once I decided to commit my time with Examiner.com to writing about recordings, I found that my personal library of recordings began to grow prodigiously. As a result, I now find it difficult to keep track of what I have; and my most reliable tool has become the indexing system I have developed for anything I download into iTunes. Where physical media are concerned, my best fighting chance is to see if I wrote about a particular recording that I happen to be seeking.

Exactly a week ago BIS Records released the first volume in a project to record music that Franz Schubert composed for violin. According to the advance material, this single CD will be accompanied by a “soon-to-be-released companion disc.” Now, to be fair about my personal context, I have to say that one of the recordings that I have revisited frequently (and enjoyably) was the Complete works for violin and piano Schubert album recorded (on two CDs) by violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cédric Tiberghien for Hyperion Records.

Nevertheless, the announcement of this new project interested me, because the plan appears to be to include not only the duo compositions but also the pieces Schubert wrote for violin and accompaniment by an instrumental ensemble. The violinist behind this project is Ariadne Daskalakis, her duo partner is Paolo Giacometti, and the instrumental ensemble is the Cologne based Kölner Akademie, founded in 1996 and led by American conductor Michael Alexander Willens. To further “sweeten the deal,” Giacometti plays a period-appropriate fortepiano.

The two duo compositions together fill the lion’s share of the entire album. Both of them are likely to be familiar to those who devote significant time to listening to chamber music. The first of these is the D. 408 sonata in G minor, the third of the four complete sonatas for violin and piano that Schubert composed. This is a four-movement piece lasting a little over twenty minutes. It is followed by the D. 934 fantasy in C major, which is probably the most familiar of Schubert’s works for violin and piano. Like many fantasies, it is a single uninterrupted movement with well-defined section boundaries; and the performance by Daskalakis runs a little over 25 minutes.

As is often the case, the fortepiano brings a clarity to Schubert’s keyboard textures that is at risk of being lost when played on a contemporary instrument (particularly by pianists with a strong attachment to the damper pedal). Neither D. 408 nor D. 934 left me with any cause for complaint. Indeed, it was particularly refreshing to listen for the first time to D. 934 played on a fortepiano. I may have first been drawn to this piece by an old recording made by Jascha Heifetz, but this new release triggered no end of new revelations in my listening experiences.

The longest of the orchestral compositions is the D. 438 rondo in A major, which has an Adagio introduction. Schubert was not yet twenty when he composed this. As a result, no listener should be surprised by any suggestions of influence from either Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Ludwig van Beethoven. The chemistry between Daskalakis and Willens could not be better, and the selection of this composition for the first track of the album makes for the best possible invitation to the attentive listener to explore the repertoire further.

“Further” turns out to be in both directions, so to speak. D. 438 is followed by D. 345, an earlier concerto in D major consisting of a single Adagio-Allegro movement. While the ensemble for D. 438 consists only of strings (and is sometimes played by a string quartet), D. 345 greets the listener with all the vigor of the opening measures of Mozart’s K. 385 (“Haffner”) symphony, which is also in the key of D major. Thus, both trumpets and timpani “set the stage” for the appearance of the violin. The final instrumental selection is the slightly later polonaise in B-flat major. Otto Erich Deutsch’s catalog lists this piece as having been composed for violin and string ensemble. However, the IMSLP page for this composition adds pairs of oboes, bassoons, and horns to the instrumentation; and the color provided by those instruments is clearly audible under Willens’ baton (assuming he uses one)!

All this suggests that, while this recording may not displace my “old favorite” recording, it is likely remain on my radar for future listening experiences.