This isn’t a tentative beginning. This first recital focuses on Beethoven in full breakthrough mode! The Violin Sonata no. 2 in A major, opus 12 opens with playful cheekiness: Beethoven experiments with unexpected modulations and pushes the violin emphatically into the foreground, out of its decorative role. Sonata No. 4 in A minor, opus 23 goes even further down that route: it is darker in tone and more tense in character, with extremely concentrated expressiveness. And then there’s the Kreutzer Sonata, one that transcends the limits of chamber music and takes on symphonic proportions thanks to the orchestral use of the fortepiano. Mullova and Beatson set the three works alongside each other in a compact sample of Beethoven’s early radicality: a heady cocktail of virtuosity, dramatic contrasts and a sense of urgency.
Program
L. van Beethoven: Violin Sonata no. 2 in A major, opus 12 nr. 2 | Violin Sonata no. 4 in A minor, opus 23 | Violin Sonata no. 9 in A major, opus 47, ‘Kreutzer Sonata’
Performers
Viktoria Mullova, violin | Alasdair Beatson, fortepiano