I can't remember who it was who said that Saint-Saens was the greatest composer who ever lived who wasn't a genius, but one understands what is meant: one usually admires and enjoys his music, but feels that the deeper human notes remain unsounded. These two violin sonatas provide a case in point: they are works that I enjoy, and yet I never feel the urge to hear them in the way that one can for other music. Kantorow and Rouvier are similarly steeped in the French tradition as well as being a well-proven team, and put the two works over with a gusto that does not altogether exclude thoughtfulness and delicacy where those qualities are called for. However, in most of the more vigorous music, like the Allegro agitato first movement of the D minor Sonata, I feel that they are trying too hard and that the writing badly needs more tonal and rhythmic space. In particular, the finale of this work becomes a noisy and, for me at least, quite detestable toccata. Of course, that's not the whole story, and there is sometimes an attractive warmth in the playing of lyrical passages. But it is all larger than life: try the start of the Second Sonata for an example of what I mean, where one would never guess that this movement has been described as ''dreamy and fanciful''. The close recording paradoxically deprives the playing of intimacy (it's too often like listening, from between the two instruments, to a concert performance projected towards the back of an auditorium) and also balances the violin forwardly.
The alternative account of these sonatas by Olivier Charlier and Jean Hubeau (Erato) is preferable because it is sensitive in the older and gentler tradition of chamber music playing. By including four other pieces Saint-Saens pieces—the Berceuse, Elegies, Opp. 143 and 160 and Romance—these artists also offer a duration of 65 minutes against the ungenerous 42 minutes here.'