Sonatas For Violin & Piano, etc.

Between about 2011-16 I drove a car that must have been among the last made with a cassette player installed. I had no cassettes, so if I wanted in-car entertainment, it had to be via the radio. I found BBC Radio 3 to be the least annoying of the readily receivable stations. One afternoon while stuck in traffic on the way home from work I heard a delightful piece for violin and piano that captured my attention: checking the playlist later I learned it was one of Carl Maria von Weber's Violin Sonatas, performed by Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov.

A few months later I bought the CD of which that performance was a part. It includes a complete set of six such sonatas that Weber wrote in 1810 and a Piano Quintet dating from the year before. All, then, are youthful works from the composer's early twenties. Roman Hinke's booklet notes (given in French, English and German) tell us that the sonatas were written for a publisher who'd requested short and simple works meant for amateur musicians. Chafing at those constraints, Weber produced pieces which were too original and too challenging for their intended recipient - but he was able to find a more open-minded buyer soon enough.

It's too bad that Weber produced so little chamber music over his short life: beyond the works on this disc and his well-known Clarinet Quintet there's very little else. It's a beguilingly lovely disc - the six sonatas are arranged out-of order: nos. 6, 3, & 4 are followed by the Quartet, and then nos. 2, 5 & 1. No. 6 is, I think, the single most arresting of the pieces, so it makes good sense to hear it first. The playing and recording are excellent throughout. Melnikov plays an early 19th Century Viennese fortepiano, Faust a Stradivarius. They are joined by Boris Faust (viola) and Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt (cello) for the Quartet.

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