Henryk Szeryng and Ingrid Haebler present Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata as a work of great beauty and poise, with sinuous power brimming just beneath the surface. Their first movement, while strong, seems a bit tame compared to Heifetz’s burning and intense performance on RCA, taken (as usual for him) at a faster-than-normal tempo. But Szeryng offers a warmer tone and Haebler is much more a participant than Emanuel Bay is for Heifetz. This is truly a collaborative effort–one in which on a few occasions the piano quite handily upstages the violin. But Szeryng claims the spotlight in turn with his beautiful tone and rhythmic alacrity, especially in the more discursive second-movement variations. In the finale Szeryng and Haebler’s ideal pace allows the music’s dotted rhythms and harmonic details to emerge more fully.
They invest the same technical skill, intrepretive care, and expressive feeling on the Spring Sonata and Sonata No. 2, with both artists supplying robust tone and paying scrupulous attention to phrasing and dynamics. Their consistent high level of energy brings all the works on this CD warmly and vividly to life, descriptive qualities that apply equally to Philips’ fine recorded sound.
