The two Brahms viola sonatas, Op. 120, were originally written for clarinet and piano, a combination that presupposes a quiet piano and an intimate atmosphere. The possibility of playing them on a viola was offered by Brahms himself, and they've often been played that way, but this requires certain adjustments. Here, violist Philip Dukes' 1696 Stradivarius instrument has a sharper edge than a clarinet, but even so, this is a piano-heavy recording. For some listeners, this will be just the ticket; from this perspective, the ...
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The two Brahms viola sonatas, Op. 120, were originally written for clarinet and piano, a combination that presupposes a quiet piano and an intimate atmosphere. The possibility of playing them on a viola was offered by Brahms himself, and they've often been played that way, but this requires certain adjustments. Here, violist Philip Dukes' 1696 Stradivarius instrument has a sharper edge than a clarinet, but even so, this is a piano-heavy recording. For some listeners, this will be just the ticket; from this perspective, the contrapuntally dense late Brahms sonatas need a corrective to the tendency to think of the piano as an accompanying instrument. For others, the viola may be a bit overwhelmed. A middle viewpoint might be that Dukes and pianist Peter Donohoe do best in propulsive, Beethovenian music, such as the Schumann Adagio and Allegro, Op. 70 (the version is Schumann's own), and most of all the rarely played Sonatensatz, WoO 2, Brahms' contribution to a composite sonata written for Joseph...
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Add this copy of Brahms: Viola Sonatas [Philip Dukes; Peter Donohoe] to cart. $41.68, new condition, Sold by Revaluation Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Exeter, DEVON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2021 by Chandos Records.
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