The three sonatas for violin and piano of
Johannes Brahms are middle- and late-period works. They're not quite of the complexity of some of the small-group chamber music from that phase of the composer's career, and they're full of songlike melodies, borrowed in a few cases from actual lieder. All have been recital favorites of marquee violin names who have emphasized this melodic content, but there's also room for a more modest reading of the sort offered here by British violinist and teacher
Simon Fischer, accompanied by pianist Raymond Fischer (the relationship, if any, is not specified). It's the rhythmic detail that comes through in this precise and at times dry recording, both in the large scale and in local features. The odd slow movement of the Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100, with its insistently returning quick refrain, gets its full measure of surprise here. Recorded in 2006, the album was not released by Britain's Biddulph label until 2011; clearly someone thought it's not the kind of thing that reaches out and grabs you, and that intuition was correct. Equally definitely, however, it grows on you. Cavernous sound from London's Henry Wood Hall is a disadvantage, but the inclusion of
Brahms' Scherzo from the rarely heard F.A.E. Sonata in C minor, collaboratively written by
Schumann,
Brahms, and the now-forgotten Albert Dietrich, is a plus, an enjoyable look at the composer as an ebullient young man. The title refers to the "frei aber einsam" motto (free but lonely) of the sonata's dedicatee,
Joseph Joachim.