Search - Kim Kashkashian, Robert Levin :: Brahms: Sonatas for Viola and Piano / Kashkashian, Levin

Enriching

David Saemann | 08/27/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Late Brahms is full of pitfalls for the interpreters. It is sublimely reticent music, which can collapse if the approach is less than inward and plays too obviously to the audience. Kashkashian and Levin have a very winning take on these pieces. Kashkashian's playing is rarely lush, but it is technically very secure and always preserves the big line of these works. Levin is perhaps best known on CD as a fortepianist, although he made a set of Bach's English Suites on the modern piano. Here I find his playing rich and sensitive, with an attention to nuances that late Brahms piano music of all kinds ideally requires. As a partnership, Levin and Kashkashian are superb. Their attention to each of the subtle tempo marking of these pieces gives their performances a great deal of character, without being overly fussy or pompous. They are captured in excellent sound engineering, with a fine balance between the two instruments. I should note that the booklet features quite a few pictures of the artists, proving that Kashkashian is rather a pretty woman, in a not very ostentatious way. I suppose she will join Cynthia Phelps of the N.Y. Philharmonic in a club for glamorous violists."