If you associate Debussy and Ravel’s sound world with subtle pastels applied in gentle dabs, you might consider violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann’s primary colors and throbbing brush strokes overly intense. You can’t argue with his spot-on intonation and impeccable technique, but the allusive qualities that characterize Debussy’s sonata are better served with a lighter bow arm and more discreet vibrato. Neither he nor pianist Alexander Lonquich bursts the delicate bubble framing the Ravel Sonata’s exposed give-and-take between violin and piano, but the same holds true for Sarah Chang’s more coy, sexier performance with pianist Lars Vogt (also on EMI). The players are too tightly wound in the central Blues movement, imposing Prokofiev’s central nervous system upon Gershwin’s soul (I much prefer Gilles Apap’s sultrier, looser account), and the snappy finale could use drier, less emphatic articulation to ensure effervescence, à la Chang/Vogt or Tetzlaff/Andsnes (Virgin Classics).
By contrast, Zimmermann’s full-throated aesthetic ideally suits Janácek’s Sonata, embracing its scruffy edges and speech-like phrases forthrightly and full-out, with no small help from his equally fervent pianist. They yield little, if anything all, to Faust/Kupiec (Harmonia Mundi), Suk/Panenka (Supraphon), and Kremer/Argerich (DG), and that says a lot. Ravel’s early “Sonate posthume” may not match the formal concision of his mature work, yet his ravishing harmonic sense and astute ear for textural variety are already evident. Zimmermann and Lonquich turn in an impassioned and well-paced reading that makes the music appear less rhapsodic than it is. All told, I recommend this 1990 recording for the Janácek and the Ravel rarity, as well as for EMI’s bright, vivid engineering.
