Schubert: Sonatas And Fantasy For Violin And Fortepiano – Ilya Gringolts

Spanning 1816 to 1827, Schubert’s works for violin and piano trace a remarkable evolution in his musical voice, though their reception has often obscured their true significance. Revisiting them today reveals a composer whose imagination for the violin was far richer than assumed, from the Classical elegance of the early sonatas to the expansive virtuosity of the Fantasy. Formed in 2022 at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, the duo of Ilya Gringolts and Anton Gerzenberg stands out for the ease with which they approach both the classical and romantic repertoire on period instruments, through a historically informed approach, and twentieth-century and contemporary music, without stylistic preclusions. This recording, Ilya Gringolts’s second album for Arcana, immediately stands out for the exceptional quality of the instruments used — Gringolts’s precious “ex-Prové” Stradivarius violin, strung with gut strings and a McNulty copy of a Conrad Graf fortepiano (Vienna, c. 1819) — as well as the extensive use of ornamentation and improvisation in the reprises: a bold and unusual choice that the two musicians apply not only to the early Sonatas but also to the later Fantasy.