Yulia Berinskaya, Stefano Ligoratti - Beethoven: Complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano Vol. 2 (Op. 23, 24 Spring & 47 Kreutzer) (2021)

This second volume of the complete recording of Beethoven’s Sonatas for violin and piano offers to its listeners two of the most famous and celebrated works of the entire violin literature, and one which would deserve a similar fate but has been comparatively neglected.

Beethoven completed ten Sonatas for violin and piano, several of which proceed in pairs (as happens with several of his Symphonies and of his Piano Sonatas). This is obviously the case with the two Sonatas op. 30, but also, perhaps less predictably, with the Sonatas op. 23 and op. 24. Indeed, these two works had been conceived as a diptych, and the Sonata currently known as op. 24 should have appeared in print as op. 23 no. 2. Seemingly, the choice to attribute a separate opus number to op. 24 was mainly due to technical reasons (a different layout). Certainly, however, the two works are very complementary, and balance each other superbly.