The twentieth-century violin and piano repertoire invites all kinds of mix-and-match programming. If this particular combination of sonatas suits your needs, you can be assured of strong, expressive, and detailed readings, with excellent violin intonation and plenty of initiative from the pianist. The recital is brightly, but not overresonantly recorded.
Essentially this is big-hall playing, and those who prize the French repertoire above all for its intimacy and charm may feel short-changed. Zimmermann lavishes expression on the Debussy, but his grainy tone and constant throbbing vibrato tend to smother the music. Here and in the familiar later Ravel sonata the temperament feels as though applied from outside. By contrast, Oistrakh on Le Chant du Monde, though not entirely at home in the Gallic idiom, is far more subtle in inflexion and seems less determined to impress.
The earlier single-movement Ravel sonata is attractive in a rather rambling way—an interesting combination of academic structural routine and personal turns of phrase. Competent though the new release is, I would still prefer Kremer and Bashkirova on Philips (a delightful programme, also taking in Stravinsky's Duo concertante, Prokofiev's Solo Sonata and pieces by Satie and Milhaud).
The Janacek Sonata might seem a more likely candidate for Zimmermann and Lonquich's powerful projection and strong expressive contouring. Theirs is indeed an urgent and communicative account. All the same, Lorraine McAslan on Collins Classics takes us deeper inside the music, while Nigel Clayton does not make Lonquich's mistake of crossing the border between passion and brutality.'