Logic Matters

The Bach recital that Viktoria Mullova gave at the Wigmore Hall last week was simply terrific. Up there with my all-time great concerts, including some Brendel, Holzmair singing Die Schöne Müllerin, and the Lindsays (often). Mullova finished up playing the great Chaconne from the second Partita. And she didn’t attack it as some do. As a reviewer said, “… many violinists try to match its immensity with a heroic sound. But Mullova often went the other way, becoming light and dancing where most violinists would be losing bow-hairs in an effort to wring a bigger sound from the instrument … totally convincing.” Certainly, she stunned the audience who sat in silence for some moments after she finished.

But the revelation for me was the two sonatas she played with Octavio Dantone. I didn’t know their recording of the sonatas on Onyx (I like Rachel Podger’s recording quite a bit, and hadn’t sought out another). But their performances last week bowled me over too, and so I sent off for the discs. And yes, hugely recommended!

I buy few new CDs these days, as I already have ridiculously many (and multiple recordings of most pieces that I really care about it). But I was driving home from my aged mother’s the other day, and the BBC were playing the Schiff/Shiokawa/Perényi recording of the E flat trio D 897, and I was bowled over. The double CD with the other trio, the D897 Notturno and the Arpeggione Sonata came out in 1997, Schubert’s bicentennial year, but — though I’ve always admired Schiff’s Schubert playing — I’d missed this record. But, still in stock at Amazon, it arrived a couple of days ago.

And it indeed is terrific. The performances could hardly be bettered it seems to me — there’s a flow to the playing and a rapport between the three that gives new life to the pieces after years of listening to the Beaux Arts’ recordings. The Gramophone review agrees. (I can’t imagine though why, after a decade, this hasn’t been reissued in a cheaper version: it deserves to be on everyone’s shelves.)