Janáček — Brahms — Bartók: Violin Sonatas (Alpha-Classics/Outhere)

★★★★☆

🎧  Spotify | Apple Music

Spot the odd man out here (the last two words can be read as a production credit).

Janáček and Bartók occupied a tranche of east-central Europe, sharing a riff of off-beat rhythms and a penchant for quarter-tones, almost atonal. Brahms did none of these. He was a Hamburger by origin, inclination and diet. What he’s doing in this Slav-Baltic sandwich album is frankly unfathomable.

The performers, Fazil Say and Patricia Koptachinskaya, are respectively Turkish and Moldavian, close enough to Janáček and Bartók. PatKop’s violin attack in the 1914 Janáček sonata is so edgy it’s almost off the cliff. Say throws her a desperate safety rope. She ignores it, playing even close to the precipice.

This is not, by any stretch of my imagination, easy listening. Life was hard in the Carpathians and the composer means you to hear it. The First World War has just begun. Take cover. This performance, abrasive as it may be, puts the listener right in the front line. It’s not for the faint-hearted.

The Bartók sonata, dated 1921, extracted modernism from rough bucolic sources, much as Picasso did in his Blue Period. Uncompromising in its opening bleakness, it finds eventual relief in the furious, superspeed propulsion of a near-suicidal finale. PatKop plays it impossibly fast, thrillingly so.

So tell me: what is Brahms’s gentle 1888 sonata doing in the middle of this album? Answers auf einem Ansichstkarte, bitte. Or sur une carte postale.

To read more from Norman Lebrecht, subscribe to Slippedisc.com.

#LUDWIGVAN

Get the daily arts news straight to your inbox.

Sign up for the Ludwig van Daily — classical music and opera in five minutes or less HERE.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Norman Lebrecht

Norman Lebrecht is one of the most widely-read commentators on music, culture and cultural politics. He is a regular presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Standpoint, Sinfini and other publications. His blog, Slipped Disc, is among the most widely read cultural sites online, breaking exclusive stories and campaigning against human abuse and acts of injustice in the cultural industries.

Latest posts by Norman Lebrecht (see all)

• LEBRECHT LISTENS | Two Releases Of Elgar Symphonies To Compare - April 19, 2024
• LEBRECHT LISTENS | Jordan Bak’s Cantabile For Viola Reveals The Neglected Instrument’s Beauty - April 12, 2024
• LEBRECHT LISTENS |David Robert Coleman & The Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra Reveal The Charms Of Walter Kaufmann - April 5, 2024