This 2020 release concludes a three-album cycle of Beethoven's violin sonatas by violinist James Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong. The album has the virtues of the others in Ehnes' series; his playing has a confident, lived-in quality, with a certain way of making the music look easy. He has played these sonatas many times and seems to have the music under the kind of control where it seems to flow through him. Ehnes is not a charismatic player, but these are readings that reward multiple hearings. Ehnes and pianist ...
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This 2020 release concludes a three-album cycle of Beethoven's violin sonatas by violinist James Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong. The album has the virtues of the others in Ehnes' series; his playing has a confident, lived-in quality, with a certain way of making the music look easy. He has played these sonatas many times and seems to have the music under the kind of control where it seems to flow through him. Ehnes is not a charismatic player, but these are readings that reward multiple hearings. Ehnes and pianist Armstrong have a precise ensemble that adjusts to the restless new quality of the piano in the Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor, Op. 30, No. 2, and then to the full dialogue in the first movement of the Violin Sonata No. 10 in G major, Op. 96, which some have suggested represented Beethoven and his possible "Immortal Beloved," Antonie Brentano. Throughout, the G major sonata has a remarkable sense of quiet spontaneity. Ehnes and Armstrong are, as before, backed by superb engineering from...
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