Charlie Siem and Itamar Golan team up for a commanding, grippingly communicative rendering of Vaughan Williams’s meaty and technically challenging Violin Sonata, conceived in 1952 for the Canadian-born virtuoso and much-loved teacher Frederick Grinke (1911 87), and premiered by him with Michael Mullinar at the piano in a BBC broadcast on October 12, 1954, to mark RVW’s 82nd birthday. Packed full of strongly distinctive invention, it features an intrepidly characterful opening Fantasia and demon of a Scherzo (a tour de force of rhythmic agility and sparky dialogue), concluding in an extended theme and six variations on a tune from the finale of the early (1903) Piano Quintet in C minor – the short melismatic cadenza just before the end serving as a gentle reminder that Grinke was a notable exponent of The Lark Ascending.

These accomplished artists are no less attuned to the folksy, outdoor charms of Grieg’s Second Violin Sonata, written during his honeymoon in the summer of 1867 and dedicated to Johan Svendsen. With his impressively secure technique and enticingly golden tone, Siem cuts a dashingly articulate figure, and both he and Golan are as affectionately responsive to the vivacious flair and winsome caprice of both outer movements as they are to the altogether more reflective world of the bardic central Allegretto tranquillo (that intensely poetic E major episode at its heart is particularly touching). Siem’s own transcription of Solveig’s Song from Peer Gynt makes a toothsome postscript. Admirable production values from the experienced team of Andrew Keener and Mike Hatch provide further incentive to investigate.