Violinist Christian Svarfvar first caught my attention with his intimately idiomatic interpretations of the three Grieg sonatas, released in 2013 on the Sterling label, a disc that now appears to be commercially unavailable (or, as we used to say in the old days, “out of print”). Hopefully his BIS debut will endure a longer catalog life.
It’s an intelligently programmed representation of Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel via short pieces and transcriptions, framed by Fauré’s A major sonata at the start, and by Ravel’s G major sonata at the end. The violinist’s light, silvery tone and spot-on intonation help enliven and characterize the Fauré sonata’s Allegro vivo and the Ravel sonata’s concluding Perpetuum mobile. I also like the naturally floating and animated qualities of the Ravel’s opening movement, although neither Svarfvar nor pianist Roland Pöntinen plays as softly as the composer requests. Indeed, Pöntinen’s fuller-bodied pianism unwittingly dominates in the Fauré sonata’s outer movement climaxes, whereas the judiciously balanced Joshua Bell/Jean-Yves Thibaudet and vividly sweeping Isabelle Faust/Florent Boffard versions offer greater translucency.
In Pablo Casals’ arrangement of Fauré’s best known song Après un rêve, I can’t help but think that Svarfvar’s darker tone and quicker vibrato subconsciously channel Casals’ cello style, although his languorous treatment of the Debussy Beau soir Heifetz transcription differs from the latter’s firmer yet less sexy hand. Svarfvar and Pöntinen perfectly calibrate the lurching tempo shifts of Debussy’s Minstrels, yet without smoothing them out. Here and in the Ravel sonata’s central Blues movement, the varied nuances and articulations of Svarfvar’s pizzicato mastery particularly resonate. A most attractive release.
