MAXIM VENGEROV / MARTHA ARGERICH
A music lover’s dream for this new Beethoven cycle. Across three concerts, the sovereign violin of Maxim Vengerov and the supreme piano of Martha Argerich present the complete cycle of the German composer’s ten sonatas for piano and violin. Music in its purest form.
Programme
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Sonata for Piano and Violin No. 1 in D major Op. 12 No. 1
Sonata for Piano and Violin No. 3 in E-flat major Op. 12 No. 3
Interval
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Sonata for Piano and Violin No. 9 in A major Op. 47 “Kreutzer”
Maxim Vengerov plays Violin Partita No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1004: III. Sarabande at Verbier Festival
Find out more
Only fifteen years separate the first and the tenth sonatas for piano and violin. Yet the path traced between these two poles is immense, as Beethoven gradually reinvents the violin sonata as we know it today. Originally entitled ‘Sonatas for harpsichord or piano, with a violin’, the three early pieces of Op. 12 extend the Mozartian legacy, in which the violin frees itself from the piano’s omnipotence. Alongside the youthful No. 1, the Sonata No. 3 is a gem of humour and mischief in which a nimble violin vies in charm with a sparkling piano.
At forty minutes, No. 9, known as the ‘Kreutzer’ (after its dedicatee, the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, who nevertheless refused to play it), is undoubtedly the most famous of the cycle; it is also the most technically demanding and the most dramatic. Leo Tolstoy would later make it the emblem of amorous passion in his novella of the same name. Faced with such a summit, could one dream of better guides than Maxim Vengerov and Martha Argerich? A sublime duo for a superb complete cycle.
