Claves Record

Edvard Grieg : The sonatas for violin and piano

Her 2008 recording of Paganini’s 1st Concerto and Bruch’s Concerto (Claves CD 50-2808) was a revelation. Alexandra Soumm’s career has since taken off like a rocket. The young French violinist is back again with the most intimate of repertoires: Edvard Grieg’s three Sonatas, which she interprets with great finesse and confidence together with her kinsman David Kadouch. Three jewels, three stepping stones in the creative life of the Norwegian composer, who described them as a “trilogy” at the end of his life. Indeed, Grieg himself gave a recital of them in Copenhagen in 1900 with violinist Wilma Neruda, thus reliving three periods of his life. He then remarked: “In the first, I was naive but full of ideas; in the second, I became a “nationalist”. In the third, I think I reached the essence of things”. But what strikes us, first and foremost today, is the resemblance between them, says Etienne Barilier in the presentation booklet. “From one to the other, virtually no time seems to have elapsed. These works are as similar as three sisters, united in the joy of singing: they all three exude a delicate, striking melodic perfume, which has not evaporated despite the years”.