Search - Pierre Amoyal, Frederic Chiu :: Grieg Violin Sonatas

In his heyday, Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) enjoyed a high-profile international status, encouraging other composers to look to their indigenous musical roots for inspiration, as he did to the folk legacy of Norway. Yet it's really astonishing how many of his pieces--aside from such works as the Piano Concerto and Peer Gynt--are gems still waiting to be discovered by a larger contingent of music lovers. Grieg himself ranked his three violin sonatas among his best works. Together they span the breadth of his career, from the folklike charm and youthful zest of the Sonata in F Major (Op. 8) to the profound, inner melancholy of the C minor sonata (Op. 45). Although their bent for the most part isn't innovative or experimental, these sonatas express an often rhapsodic intensity within the confines of the romantic chamber music idiom. Pierre Amoyal and Frederic Chiu have developed a partnership (apparent in their acclaimed recording of Prokofiev sonatas) that is ingratiatingly balanced and blissfully spontaneous in expression--just savor how Chiu plays the piano's harmonies off violinist Amoyal's sweetly focused but uncloying tone. In these passages of heightened lyricism, Amoyal readily mimics the human voice on which Grieg lavished such tenderness in his songs. Recorded at the Skywalker Sound studios, the CD is warmly enveloping and has a fantastic clarity. --Thomas May