Three superb Sonatas for Violin and Piano were presented to the public by Leonidas Kavakos and Chinese pianist Yuja Wang during their November 20 concert at the packed Christos D. Lambrakis Hall.

At first the temperature was low, but gradually rose during the evening, culminating in an outstanding performance of Robert Schumann’s Second Sonata for Violin and Piano. In the work of this composer, the priority is the expression of emotions, not just intense, but literally filled with longing. For this particular piece, its first performer, the violinist Josef Joachim, noted that it was “overflowing with noble passion, almost harsh and bitter in its expression”. Kavakos and Wang bring out the struggle raging in the music, which is nowhere more pronounced than in the lyrical third movement. “Quietly, simply” asks the composer to perform this part, to a proposal to which the two musicians responded with a poetic interpretation. This is a series of variations on the theme of the chorale “Jesus Christ, glory to Thee”, the tender mood of which is disturbed, almost broken by the initiative of the piano, revealing the melancholy and confusion hiding behind the calmness. Overall, the performance of the Sonata emphasized the emotional struggle so characteristic of many works of Schumann’s maturity, as Van and Kavakos engaged in intense and creative dialogue.

Kavakos and Wang reproduced the emotional struggle of Schumann’s Sonata for Violin and Piano.

The aesthetics of the first Sonata for Violin and Piano by Brahms is similar. Although the work was written much later than Schumann’s, Brahms draws on the logic of earlier colleagues such as Franz Schubert. Just as Schumann uses the aforementioned chorale, so Brahms draws on his earlier “Rain Song”, the mood of which he expresses through music. The dominating melancholic mood was conveyed by the two musicians with a courtesy of style, but perhaps with excessive emotional restraint, smoothing out the difference in speed, as well as in dynamics. In a large hall, the transmission of a musical drama with such subtle transitions is rarely perceived as it would be in a small hall or when listening to a recording in an even more cramped space.

Between the two works of the 19th century, two musicians performed the Sonata for Violin and Piano by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček, which took its final form in 1922. language, the composer expresses the same strong emotions and is characteristically dramatic, as one would expect from the creator of highly dramatic works for the stage. His equally formal lyricism is generously revealed in the “ballad”, the second movement of the Sonata. Leonidas Kavakos and Yuja Wang successfully responded to the nuances of the music, the theatrical gestures and its tenderness, and their performance in the last movement was breathtaking in terms of intensity and precision.