Our second CD features three magnificent sonatas: Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in G major, Op. 30/3; Schubert’s Violin Sonata in G minor, D 408; and Gaetano Brunetti’s (1744–1798) Sonata for Viola and Piano in D major – a rarity. It also includes pieces by Grigoraș Dinicu (1889–1949), Max Bruch and John Williams, wich are closely linked thematically: Dinicu, as a Romani, was a musician and composer persecuted during the Nazi era; Williams composed a moving score for the film Schindler’s List; and Bruch transformed one of the most important prayers of the Jewish faith into a musical work of art. Massenet and Verdi were great opera composers. Instrumental music only came into being through opera; it first learnt to sing in the school of opera. This ‘singing’ through the instrument – which requires no words yet is capable of saying more without them, because no text predetermines the meaning – can be found in the ‘Méditation’ from the opera Thaïs and in ‘La Seduzione‘, but also in the slow movement of Brunetti’s Sonata for Viola and Piano – a wistful aria – and in the second movement of Schubert’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in G minor – a song without words – as well as in the slow movement of Beethoven’s Sonata in G major, Op. 30/3. The cantabile quality conveyed by the instruments is a second common thread linking all works on this album. Recorded in the Konzertsaal der Europäischen Wochen Passau, sound engineer: Albert Kölbl

Aufgenommen im Konzertsaal der Europäischen Wochen Passau, Tonmeister: Albert Kölbl