An exciting evening of chamber music took place on April 4 as part of the Spring Festival in the Dimitris Mitropoulos Hall of the Athens Music Hall. Two outstanding young musicians, Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang and Russian pianist Denis Kozukin, presented a program that included the first Sonata for Violin and Piano by Johannes Brahms and the first Sonata for the same instruments by Béla Bartók. Between the two works, Kozukin also performed seven “Lyric Pieces” by Edvard Grieg for piano solo.

Brahms was 45 when he began composing his first violin sonata in 1878. He had already completed the first two of his four symphonies and the first of his two piano concertos. For his first Sonata, he drew inspiration from two of his own vocal compositions, “Rain Song” and “Echo”, based on words by Klaus Groth that he had set to music a few years earlier. From the name of the first of the two poems comes the nickname “Rain Sonata”. Largely thanks to Frank, the Sonata received a powerful expressive performance, characterized by a constant retuning of the speed and dynamics of each phrase, depending on the dramatic content of the music. So, especially in the live parts, the interpretation had a tense movement and plasticity, and in slow seconds the lyricism gained strength and pulse.

A benchmark performance that perfectly balances intellectual elements with deep emotion.

In seven of Grieg’s 66 “Lyric Pieces” following this, Denis Kozukin gave the measure of his extraordinary virtuosity and expressive abilities. The clever choice between the short inventions of the Norwegian composer led to a constant change of rhythms and, above all, moods. The alternation of lighter and stronger musical miniatures, more airy and others with a playful character, allowed the pianist to reveal different sides of his talent.

However, the climax came in the second part of the evening with Bartók’s first Sonata. Written for the eminent Hungarian violinist Geli d’Arani, it was first performed in 1922 in London, where she and the composer played piano. In Athens, Vilde Frang and Denis Kozukin delivered a benchmark performance, honest and direct, with a superb balance between the intellectual elements of writing seen mostly in the piano part and the deep, expressive feeling that Bartók relied on in the violin. This balance was established mainly in the first movement, where these two aspects of the music are in constant dialogue.

Frang then moved on in her nostalgic, melancholic monologue in the second movement of the Sonata. With a sound of great quality and great delicacy, he unfolded the melodic line with the main goal of expressiveness, and therefore with great concern for the plasticity of phrases. Together, the two musicians gave a frenzied performance of an assaulting virtuoso finale that required both maximum precision and excellent coordination.