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For their December 2006 recital in Berlin long time colleagues Kremer and Argerich constructed an artful and apposite Schumann and Bartók programme. The fruits are heard in this two CD set, which encapsulates playing of, as one would expect, great commitment, often galvanic resources and occasional puzzlements.

They recorded Schumann’s D minor sonata for DG but this live performance is just as good, let down only by minor balance problems - Argerich sometimes overpowers Kremer. The second subject of the first movement is also just too elastic for my own taste but the conjoining of Argerich’s leonine pianism and Kremer’s astringently toned violin playing makes for a fruitful if sometimes quixotic melange. Kremer next takes centre stage for Bartók’s solo violin sonata. Forget the tonal abrasions, the very occasional adjacent string touching, as well as understandable brief intonational lapses throughout this gigantic, pole-axing work; this is nevertheless a performance of commanding virtuosity and titanic engagement. Other performances may be more tonally emollient but this has a stark, raw concentration that gives it a granitic compulsion.

The second disc opens with Kinderszenen, another performance of great force, even vehemence in places but also more personalised as well. Argerich can be relied upon not to drown in platitudes and one’s response to her playing will naturally vary. The rocking rubati of I are certainly provocative and the unexpected is seldom withheld for long, as witness her emphatic left hand accents in V or the not-quite-pummelling she dishes out to VI. Träumerei isn’t sentimentalised, X is especially expressive, XI very skittish indeed and the final two full of rich cantabile though also personalised rubati.

Which brings us to Bartók again; his 1921 Sonata, which this pair has also recorded commercially. Both musicians play this with an utter lack of generic tonal resources, instead vesting the sonata with myriad and suggestive emotive landmarks. Thus for all the pinched and nasal Kremer tone - you surely won’t listen to the discs if you reject his tonal resources ab initio - we hear the half tints, the simmering evasions and glimmering Whistlerian chiaroscuro that this sonata embodies so characteristically. It’s in the central movement however that Kremer most validates his expressive arsenal. Here the music, aided by his particular tonal qualities, achieves a lonely astringency in its opening soliloquy, a curious and touching vulnerability, the fragile thread withdrawn and never quite harmonising.

Both Bartók sonatas are the highlights of this programme. Neither Kreisler encore hits the mark; the style and tone are all wrong. No, it’s for those Bartók sonatas that this recital remains so compelling. Given the occasional imbalances and impedimenta of ancillary small problems this will be an artist rather than a composer-led purchase, but there is some truly formidable playing here.

Jonathan Woolf  

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