On Trio Op. 97 'Archduke' - These musicians have been playing together for a while now, since they met at the Pablo Casals Prades Festival in 2009. In the 'Archduke' Trio there is well-padded playing, lush, warm-toned and full of delicacy: some of the interplay between the strings in the first movement is delightfully light and playful, particularly in the pizzicato passage. The opening of the scherzo has a similar dry delicacy and humour. The worming chromatic passage slithers inexorably into the joyful piano outburst. The opening of the Andante cantabile is a study in note placing, with the slightest touches of rubato and emphases: the two-note string lead into their first melody is itself a small joy. The movement floats along, light, airy and sublime. The finale is earthy, dramatic and elegant. Tim Homfray, The Strad

Kvapil is considered the finest exponent of Czech piano music.. a performer with such a specialized repertoire is often unfairly 'tagged' with the erroneous reputation of not playing anything else, and Kapil's present release of three Beethoven piano sonatas will certainly correct that idea.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

BEETHOVEN: COMPLETE VIOLIN SON

There is a distinct danger that our ears may be killed with kindness — the temptation to listen to far too much at once is almost impossible to resist.

There is a distinct danger that our ears may well be killed with kindness by this transfer to CD of all the Beethoven sonatas played by Heifetz. Each volume gives over an hour of generous playing time and, unless one is rigorously self-disciplined, the temptation to listen to far too much at once is almost impossible to resist.

The transfers, of recordings made between 1947 and 1960, are of the highest quality, revealing the very essence of Heifetz's art. In the three early Op. 12 Sonatas, we hear that flinty intonation which, fusing with the mere caress of the bow, creates unique finesse for the brio of the opening of No. 1 and the gleeful quick changes of register in the first movement of No. 3. One is reminded, too, that unlike so many of his Juilliard-trained successors to virtuosity, there is never any concession to the primacy of polished sound alone: it is always the nature of the instrument itself, the grain of its wood, the pliability of its strings, the tension of the horsehair, which is brought to bear on the nature of the interpretation itself.

It is the Third, E flat major, Sonata which points, too, the happiness of Heifetz's partnership with his pianist, Emmanuel Bay. Overriding the slight and inevitable dryness of recording, there is a sweetness, a simplicity, a quicksilver response which at times achieves the rare feat of enabling the ear to apprehend both players' contributions simultaneously. In the slow movement Heifetz, as if acknowledging where Beethoven's heart lay in this Sonata, is cool, almost distanced from the piano's dominant role.

Heifetz as miniaturist makes himself known in the Fourth Sonata (Op. 23) and in the very last one (Op. 96). For the C minor Sonata, Beethoven's first in a minor key, he refuses the temptation to don the tragic mask, leaning almost nonchalantly on the accents and upbeats of the first movement, and treating the Andante scherzoso with a piquant near-minimalism.

The two big sonatas, on the other hand, are boldy characterized. The Spring is, typically, one of the fastest in the business: this is a true driving Allegro, with the sap rising fast through Heifetz's intense vibrato and his firm, heavy pressure on the down-bow. He makes it clear that molto espressivo does not mean motto adagio in the slow movement: this, too, is marked by a steady sense of direction, with each carefully shaded sustained note carrying through the momentum of the whole.

Brooks Smith is a generally less characterful, more self-effacing pianist in the Kreutzer Sonata. But Heifetz redoubles the attack, never letting us forget that this is the spirit as well as the letter of a true Presto. Stark, biting passages of bowing suddenly draw back to moments of smoky half-voice before the cool air of the slow movement. The theme is penny-plain in its unfolding, the better to offset the electric signals with which Heifetz responds to the piano in the first variation, the audaciously driven moto perpetuo of the second, and the remarkable trills of the fourth.

-- Gramophone [1/1988]

BEETHOVEN: PIANO SONATAS NO 15

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO 6, EGMO

This is a throwback to an older style of Beethoven playing, the style that the champions of authentic performance such as Roger Norrington have taught us to be wary of. The sound is an unashamedly old-fashioned one; it’s massive, full, and beautifully blended, even when the music seems to call for strong contrasts. The tempi are slow, even stately, and the joins between sections are nicely dovetailed... They may not have the thrilling energy that Norrington brings to bear in his recordings, but they have a wonderfully spacious quality, and the slowish tempi allow the inner parts to sound with unusual clarity.

-- Ivan Hewett, BBC Music Magazine

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO 3 IN E

Recorded 1939.

THE HEIFETZ COLLECTION VOL 10

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONIES NOS 5 &