Sunny and warm as Fritz Kreisler, thoughtful as Joseph Szigeti, and, where appropriate, intense as Francescatti, Paul Barritt reveals a fourth dimension in Beethoven's works. His partnership with James Lisney seems just about ideal...
Barritt and Lisney seem to possess a unanimity of outlook throughout these sonatas that spills over into details as well as into the underlying rhythmic coordination of their playing...Rhythmic figures or passagework never sound fussy, studied, or overstropped: their exactness simply provides a sort of pleasurable undercurrent that bubbles like champagne to the surface in running passages... Despite playing (by both partners) that strenuously avoids calling attention to itself, the set shines with a spiritual beacon light....
The ample notes combine scholarship
with insightful description...
Urgently recommended. Fanfare Magazine
This is a notable release, then, one to return to, and beautifully presented with a 15-page essay on the sonatas by Simon Nicholls.
Barritt
and Lisney are an exceptional duo, and their performances of these ten sonatas
encompass poise, interaction, drive and energy in renditions that are
thoughtful and perceptive, fresh and engaging, thoroughly absorbed in the
music, and which raise the stakes of a corpus of music all too easy, the
'Kreutzer' aside, to underestimate.
International Record Review
These recordings have been chosen by Warner Classics for inclusion in their Complete Beethoven Edition.
Catalogue No. WOODCD803/6 (4 CDs)
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