Beethoven: Complete Violin Sonatas

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Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Ludwig van Beethoven

Label: DHM

Magazine Review Date: 1/1989

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 234

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: CDS7 49144-2

Tracks:

Composition	Artist Credit
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1	Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Jaap Schröder, Violin Jos van Immerseel, Fortepiano Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2	Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Jaap Schröder, Violin Jos van Immerseel, Fortepiano Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 3	Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Jaap Schröder, Violin Jos van Immerseel, Fortepiano Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 4	Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Jaap Schröder, Violin Jos van Immerseel, Fortepiano Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 5, 'Spring'	Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Jaap Schröder, Violin Jos van Immerseel, Fortepiano Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 6	Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Jaap Schröder, Violin Jos van Immerseel, Fortepiano Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 7	Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Jaap Schröder, Violin Jos van Immerseel, Fortepiano Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 8	Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Jaap Schröder, Violin Jos van Immerseel, Fortepiano Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 9, 'Kreutzer'	Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Jaap Schröder, Violin Jos van Immerseel, Fortepiano Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 10	Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Jaap Schröder, Violin Jos van Immerseel, Fortepiano Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer

Author: Lionel Salter

There are already six CD sets of Beethoven's complete violin sonatas, but this is the first to employ period instruments—a violin that was made over a century before any of these works were written, and a Graf fortepiano of 1824. (It's also the first issue with a booklet claiming, in three languages and against all the evidence, that Op. 30 No. 2 is in C major—but that's another matter.) Do not, I fear, look for any special insights here. Robin Golding was unenthusiastic about the present players' Mozart sonatas (on two Deutsche Harmonia Mundi LPs—1C 165 99972/3, 4/84) particularly about the ''hard clinical tone of the violin and the total avoidance of vibrato''. Neither of these criticisms applies here: on the contrary Jaap Schroder's sweet, silky tone in slow movements (in which, as in the Spring Sonata, he often creates a wonderfully peaceful atmosphere) is one of the best features of this issue; but overall I am equally unenthusiastic.
It is understandable that the recordings should have had to be made in the Vleeshuis Museum in An werp where the fortepiano is housed, but it was a far from ideal venue, its considerable reverberation filling in rests, blurring such things as piano scale passages (notably so in the Spring and Tenth Sonatas) and forcing on our attention not merely piano action noise (which can be disregarded) but extraneous sounds such as footsteps or hasty page-turns—the opening of No. 7 and of No. 2's second movement, for example, should certainly have been re-recorded. Performances are very variable: the most successful sonatas here are No. 8, with an attractively light-hearted Allegro assai, No. 4, with a rhythmically vital Presto, and No. 6, where the printed dynamics are observed to a degree conspicuously ignored elsewhere (Beethoven's characteristic subito piano is a particular sufferer)—though in this last did Schroder really intend an F sharp harmonic minor scale in bar 130 and is the slower pace of the repeat in the Allegretto's second variation the result of splicing two takes? In other works some details seem not to have been considered and agreed upon by the two partners: where exactly to place the turn in the second subject of the Kreutzer (a sonata in which Schroder's usually impeccable intonation has an off-day), or the length of the 'little note' in the dotted figure of No. 10's second subject; and even allowing for the reverberation, Immerseel often fails to distinguish between legato, detached and staccato articulation. Balance also is not without its problems: the piano's repeated chords in No. 5's second subject, and its left-hand broken chord patterns from bar 17 in No. 2, are too loud; in No. 7's development section the important imitative bass figures are subordinated to the right-hand semiquavers, and in the start of its Trio the canonic voice does not emerge as it should.
I regret to say, however, that outdistancing all other defects in this set is the all too fallible playing of Immerseel, which the recording supervisor seems to have made little effort to correct. Since some record companies have a way of expressing outraged incredulity at any suggestion of faults and not infrequently challenge a critic's competence, I will be Beckmesser-ish and give chapter and verse (movement and bar numbers) for the most striking flaws: wrong notes or fumbles, No. 3, I 114, III 55, IV 55 and 216; No. 5, I 202, III Trio 12; No. 7, IV 230; No. 9, III 20; No. 10, I 187; missing or misplaced notes or chords No. 1, I 46, No. 2, II 148; No. 3, I 56, II 1; No. 7, I 99; No. 9, I 19, III 386. As one of the 'documents' of the prestigious Schola Cantorum Basiliensis this is a deeply disappointing issue.'