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The Weilerstein Duo

Schumann: Complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano

CLASSICAL MUSIC REVIEW
THE BALTIMORE SUN

Azica Classical ACD-71204
Donald Weilerstein, violin
Vivian Hornik-Weilerstein, piano

CD pays proper respect to Schumann's greatness

By STEPHEN WIGLER

The Baltimore Sun

It wasn't very long ago that performances of Schumann's chamber music -- with the exception of the Piano Quintet in E-flat -- were rare. Now most of these works seem to be entering the repertory -- on records, at least. The reason isn't hard to discern. Musicians love to play Schumann. His music is so deeply personal that it can make performers (and sensitive listeners, as well) feel as if they are inside the notes.

Because they are not household names, it would be easy to overlook the disc by violinist Donald Weilerstein and his wife, pianist, Vivian Hornik Weilerstein. That would be a mistake. Weilerstein, one of the founding members of the Cleveland Quartet, is a musician with an abundance of temperament, a distinctive, often thrilling sonority and intellectual fearlessness. (He will remind many listeners of Gidon Kremer.) And he is superbly partnered by Hornik Weilerstein.

Their performances of Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2, in fact, match those by Kremer and Martha Argerich on a DG disc, and their disc contains a bonus in Schumann's Sonata No. 3 in A minor. This 1853 piece, written only weeks before the composer's final descent into madness, is almost never recorded and performed and was published in 1956, the centennial of the composers death.

Experienced listeners will recognize the final two movements as the intermezzo and finale of the "F. A. E." Sonata that Schumann wrote with Brahms and Albert Dietrich as a present for the violinist Joseph Joachim. A few days after Joachim performed the piece, Schumann expanded his contribution into a full-scale sonata with the addition of an opening movement and a scherzo.

This is wonderful music -- easily the equal of the two previous sonatas -- and the Weilersteins perform it with appropriate passion and abandonment.

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