Credits:

Mutter, Anne-Sophie

Description:

The Legacy of the Lone Violinist Szigeti. Beethoven with Arau has been completely restored on XRCD! The supreme sonata live recordings revived in the best sound quality ever! This is the third release in Szigeti's XRCD series, following the long-running Bach unaccompanied violin works (GCAC-1002/3) and Mozart violin sonatas (GCAC-1004/5, GCAC-1006/7). The complete Beethoven violin sonatas are released in two sets of two discs, remastered by renowned engineer Kazuya Sugimoto from official sources provided by VanguardClassic, and carefully crafted as XRCD, a high-quality sound format that can be played on ordinary CD players. This is a live recording of a three-day concert of Beethoven's complete violin sonatas at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in 1944. Szigeti was 51 years old at the time, and Arau was 40. Szigeti insisted on playing all of the sonatas in their entirety, and you can hear the dense expression of every breath in every piece. Szigeti's inspired violin intertwines with Arrau's piano, which is heavy and full of flavor, as if the music is slowly building up.Sometimes fierce and violent, sometimes shifting and shadowy, Szigeti creates a world of Beethoven that you will not find anywhere else. The live performance has also polished Szigeti's unique narrative style, and the performance is full of Szigeti's virtuosity, including the pathos in the minor key, the terrifying "Spring" and the intense "Kreutzer". The tension is unrelenting from beginning to end. The Violin Sonatas are also notable for the emphasis on the piano, but the only other recordings by Arrau, who is an unshakably popular Beethoven player, are the excerpts (Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8) from the 1970s, which he made with Gounmiaux. This recording is extremely valuable in that it allows us to hear Arrau's approach to the complete works. King International