Sonates et fantaisie pour violon et pianoforte

Description

Spanning from 1816 to 1827, Schubert’s works for violin and piano trace a remarkable evolution in his musical voice, though their reception has often obscured their true significance. Revisiting them today reveals a composer whose imagination for the violin was far richer than previously thought, from the classical elegance of the early sonatas to the expansive virtuosity of the Fantasy. Formed in 2022 at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, the duo Ilya Gringolts and Anton Gerzenberg stands out for the ease with which they approach both the classical and Romantic repertoire on period instruments, through a historically informed approach, and 20th-century and contemporary music, without stylistic exclusions. This recording, Ilya Gringolts’s second album for Arcana, stands out immediately for the exceptional quality of the instruments used — Gringolts’s precious Stradivarius “ex-Prové” violin, strung with gut strings, and a McNulty copy of a fortepiano by Conrad Graf (Vienna, c. 1819) — as well as for the extensive use of ornamentation and improvisation in the repeats: a bold and unusual choice that the two musicians apply not only to the early Sonatas but also to the later Fantasy.