The hot French violinist Renaud Capuçon encountered pianist Khatia Buniatishvili over a one-off performance of César Franck's Violin Sonata in A major, and the pair decided to take a break from their usual duet partners (Martha Argerich and Gidon Kremer, respectively) and undertake a program with the Franck sonata at its center. To go with it, the pair chooses two more works composed in 1885 and 1886, and moreover works that do not display much in the way of nationalist sentiment. The program diminishes in intensity after ...
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The hot French violinist Renaud Capuçon encountered pianist Khatia Buniatishvili over a one-off performance of César Franck's Violin Sonata in A major, and the pair decided to take a break from their usual duet partners (Martha Argerich and Gidon Kremer, respectively) and undertake a program with the Franck sonata at its center. To go with it, the pair chooses two more works composed in 1885 and 1886, and moreover works that do not display much in the way of nationalist sentiment. The program diminishes in intensity after the Franck at the beginning, with the zippy Grieg Violin Sonata No. 3 in C major, Op. 43, and the elegant Romantic Pieces, Op. 75, of Dvorák executed confidently. But the Franck is worth the price of admission. Capuçon catches the deliberate, mesmerized quality of the cyclic violin part as it unrolls through four relaxed movements, with only the Allegro second movement adding drama. Yet often it's on the contribution of the pianist that performances of this sonata stand or fall: the...
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