Two masters play Beethoven
Christopher Bonds | 01/14/2000
(4 out of 5 stars)
"I had this recording back in the 50s when it first came out. It's a great pity they never recorded all the Beethoven sonatas (at least that I know of) because the sense of ensemble musicianship is here at its highest. You have the aged Rubinstein teaming up with the (then) fairly young Henryk Szerying, surely one of the great violinists of his time (listen to that sense of pitch!) on some of the greatest violin-piano music ever written. This is a partnership of equals which exhibits the "balanced passion" that is apparently the hallmark of a bygone era, a kind of golden age between the sentimentalizing early years of the 20th century and the grandstanding virtuosity of the 21st (are we there yet?). If you're looking for the "real" Beethoven of these sonatas look no further."