Brahms: Violin Sonata no. 1 in G Major; Violin Sonata no. 2 in A Major; Violin Sonata no. 3 in D Minor
Ilya Kaler, violin; Alexander Peskanov, piano.
Naxos 8.554828. Format, 71:50.
The Brahms violin sonatas occupy peculiar territory—not quite the Olympian heights of the late piano works or the symphonies, yet too substantial to be dismissed as chamber music for Sunday afternoons. They span a decade of the composer’s maturity, from the autumnal lyricism of op. 78 to the gnarled, almost combative rhetoric of op. 108. And they demand from their interpreters something beyond mere technical facility: a kind of conversational intimacy that never forgets the music’s architectural ambitions.
Ilya Kaler understands this. His tone in the opening of the G Major Sonata has that peculiar amber quality—warm but not cloying, with just enough edge to suggest the instrument’s resistance to the bow. Listen to how he shapes the first theme: there’s genuine vocal inflection here, the kind of rubato that breathes rather than mannered. No small achievement. His intonation remains impeccable even in the treacherous double stops of the second movement, where lesser players tend to fudge the tuning or sacrifice tonal warmth for accuracy.
The partnership with Alexander Peskanov proves revelatory. I confess I approached this disc with the usual skepticism one reserves for unfamiliar names on budget labels—but Peskanov is no mere accompanist treading water. In the A Major Sonata’s second movement, his left hand provides such supple support that Kaler’s cantilena seems to float above it without effort. The balance engineers achieved at the Toronto Centre for the Arts deserves mention too: the piano emerges with real presence, not the recessed, deferential sound one sometimes encounters in violin-piano recordings.
But it’s in op. 108 where this partnership truly distinguishes itself. The D Minor Sonata—that most Beethovenian of Brahms’s late chamber works—requires both players to embrace its darker energies without succumbing to bombast. The opening movement’s first theme, with its descending thirds, has genuine bite here. Peskanov’s octaves in the development section possess real weight, his articulation crisp without becoming percussive. When Kaler digs into the "Presto" agitato "finale", there’s an almost desperate quality to his playing—the kind of intensity that makes you sit forward in your chair.
Technical security, yes. Both players have that in abundance. What matters more: they seem to have internalized the music’s dialectic between passion and restraint, between the lyric impulse and the need for formal coherence. The slow movement of op. 100, for instance—that miraculous "Andante" tranquillo where Brahms quotes his own song “Wie Melodien zieht es mir“—unfolds with such natural inevitability that you forget to notice the performers at all. Which is, of course, the point.
Some minor reservations. Kaler’s vibrato, while generally well controlled, occasionally becomes a touch too continuous in the lyric passages of op. 78—I found myself wanting more variety of color, more willingness to thin the sound or even play straight tone where the harmony grows particularly dense. And in the "scherzo" of the A Major, both players could have pushed the tempo a fraction more; there are moments where the music threatens to settle rather than dance.
But these are quibbles. The recorded sound captures both instruments with clarity and warmth, the acoustic neither too dry nor too reverberant. Naxos continues to prove that budget pricing need not mean budget artistry—this disc stands comfortably alongside the Suk-Katchen recordings (still unsurpassed for their combination of intellectual rigor and emotional directness) and the more recent Tetzlaff-Vogt traversal.
At 71 minutes, you get all three sonatas without the couplings that sometimes pad out these collections. What you also get—more important—is music-making of genuine distinction, performances that honor both the letter and spirit of these magnificent works. Kaler and Peskanov have something to say about this music, and they say it with eloquence and conviction. Strongly recommended.
