Brahms / Schumann pairs two violin sonatas by composers bound by friendship: Johannes Brahms's Sonata No. 1 in G major, op. 78, and Robert Schumann's Sonata No. 2 in D minor, op. 121. It is the third ECM New Series album by the violinist Yuuko Shiokawa and the pianist András Schiff as a duo, after Franz Schubert's C major Fantasy in 2000 and a 2017 programme of sonatas by Bach, Busoni and Beethoven. Clara Schumann stands behind both works, as the first performer of one and the recipient of the songs behind the other.
The Brahms was recorded in December 2015 and the Schumann in January 2019, both at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano. Stephan Schellmann was the Tonmeister and Manfred Eicher produced. Wolfgang Stähr wrote the liner notes, and the booklet reproduces autograph pages from the Brahms-Institut in Lübeck and the Heinrich-Heine-Institut in Düsseldorf. Shiokawa and Schiff are also partners in life, a closeness that reviewers hear in the playing.
Brahms's sonata is known as the Regenlied sonata. Its finale draws on two of his songs, Regenlied and Nachklang, which he had given Clara for her 54th birthday, and Stähr notes that he kept the song's dripping piano figure as well as its theme. The dotted opening of the song already shapes the first movement, Vivace ma non troppo. Schumann completed his D minor sonata in 1851, and Clara premiered it with Joseph Joachim in 1853. Its four movements run from the broad Ziemlich langsam opening to the quiet variations of Einfach, leise. The B minor second movement probably left a mark on the scherzo the young Brahms wrote that same year for the F-A-E Sonata.
For James Manheim at AllMusic, "the listener feels that they have entered an inward realm that is deep and unfathomable." Andrew Farach-Colton, in Gramophone, heard "a special feeling of intimacy and mutual understanding" in their music-making and found the recording pleasingly resonant. In Rondo, Guido Fischer praised the balance between sensuous expression and reflective motion, with Schumann's marking "Einfach, leise" taken at its word.
This is the CD edition, ECM New Series 2815, released in October 2024.
