Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas
Amaury Coeytaux & Geoffroy Couteau
Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas is a recording by violinist Amaury Coeytaux and pianist Geoffroy Couteau, released in September 2021 on the French label La Dolce Volta. The album forms the fifth volume in Couteau's ongoing and widely praised complete survey of Brahms's chamber music with piano for the same label — a project that has also encompassed the piano trios, quartets, quintet, cello sonatas, and clarinet sonatas. Coeytaux, first violinist of the Quatuor Modigliani, serves as Couteau's principal collaborator for the violin works, and the two musicians have cited the 1967 recording by Josef Suk and Julius Katchen on Decca as their interpretive touchstone, aiming for what Best Buy's liner note summary describes as "a version of these masterpieces notable for its plenitude of sonority, at once intense and reserved in its expression." The disc received the prestigious 4F de Télérama award upon its French release.
The eleven-track album, running approximately seventy-six minutes, presents all three violin sonatas in full — the lyrical Sonata No. 1 in G major, Op. 78; the intimate and song-like Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100; and the turbulent Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108 — along with the Scherzo in C minor, WoO 2, from the collaborative "F-A-E" Sonata that Brahms co-composed with Robert Schumann and Albert Dietrich as a gift for their friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. Froggy's Delight praised the performances for their "grande finesse, grande souplesse, et intense subtilité," noting a solid Romantic sweep and animated conversational interplay between the two instruments while never losing sight of the music's intimacy. ResMusica described the interpretations as "équilibrée, complice, inspirée et colorée, sans théâtralité excessive, sincère et profonde" — balanced, complicit, inspired, and colored, without excessive theatricality, sincere and deep.
Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas
Amaury Coeytaux & Geoffroy Couteau
Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas is a recording by violinist Amaury Coeytaux and pianist Geoffroy Couteau, released in September 2021 on the French label La Dolce Volta. The album forms the fifth volume in Couteau's ongoing and widely praised complete survey of Brahms's chamber music with piano for the same label — a project that has also encompassed the piano trios, quartets, quintet, cello sonatas, and clarinet sonatas. Coeytaux, first violinist of the Quatuor Modigliani, serves as Couteau's principal collaborator for the violin works, and the two musicians have cited the 1967 recording by Josef Suk and Julius Katchen on Decca as their interpretive touchstone, aiming for what Best Buy's liner note summary describes as "a version of these masterpieces notable for its plenitude of sonority, at once intense and reserved in its expression." The disc received the prestigious 4F de Télérama award upon its French release.
The eleven-track album, running approximately seventy-six minutes, presents all three violin sonatas in full — the lyrical Sonata No. 1 in G major, Op. 78; the intimate and song-like Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100; and the turbulent Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108 — along with the Scherzo in C minor, WoO 2, from the collaborative "F-A-E" Sonata that Brahms co-composed with Robert Schumann and Albert Dietrich as a gift for their friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. Froggy's Delight praised the performances for their "grande finesse, grande souplesse, et intense subtilité," noting a solid Romantic sweep and animated conversational interplay between the two instruments while never losing sight of the music's intimacy. ResMusica described the interpretations as "équilibrée, complice, inspirée et colorée, sans théâtralité excessive, sincère et profonde" — balanced, complicit, inspired, and colored, without excessive theatricality, sincere and deep.