If there’s a more skillfully crafted, melodically inventive, and emotionally three-dimensional sonata for violin and piano by a 15-year-old composer than Erich Korngold’s Op. 6 (written for Carl Flesch and Artur Schnabel), I haven’t heard it. No doubt Korngold absorbed the byways and intricacies of late-German Romanticism while still in the womb. By contrast, the young Ernst Krenek’s mastery of the idiom resulted in a student violin sonata that’s drier, more rhythmically foursquare, and harmonically restless in a style you might call “Reger Lite”.
Although the two works make fascinating disc mates, the music needs more nuance, timbral variety, and dynamic contrast than violinist Christoph Schickedanz’s squeezed, arid tone delivers. Listen, for example, to Schickedanz’s relatively severe and undifferentiated treatment of Korngold’s gorgeous Adagio alongside Joseph Lin’s intense central climax and hauntingly hushed coda, and you’ll understand what I mean. Moreover, Telos’ close microphone placement yields claustrophobic results, with Bernhard Fograscher’s accomplished piano playing balanced too far forward in the mix. There’s no significant catalog competition for the Krenek, but Lin (Naxos), Andreas Frolich (CPO), and Andras Kiss (Marco Polo) remain my Korngold Sonata preferences, in that order.
