Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K10, K14, K30, K301, K304, K379, K481

Call me a killjoy, but my pulse rate rarely quickens at the prospect of Mozart’s pre-pubescent music. The three childhood works on these discs—essentially keyboard sonatas with discreet violin support—go through the rococo motions pleasantly enough. But amid the music’s chatter and trickle, only the doleful minore episode in the minuet finale of K30 and the carillon effects in the corresponding movement of K14 (enchantingly realised here) offer anything faintly individual. Still, it would be hard to imagine more persuasive performances than we have here from the ever-rewarding Tiberghien-Ibragimova duo: delicate without feyness, rhythmically buoyant (Tiberghien is careful not to let the ubiquitous Alberti figuration slip into auto-ripple) and never seeking to gild the lily with an alien sophistication.

The players likewise bring the crucial Mozartian gift of simplicity and lightness of touch (Ibragimova’s pure, sweet tone selectively warmed by vibrato) to the mature sonatas that frame each of the two discs. It was Mozart, with his genius for operatic-style dialogues, who first gave violin and keyboard equal billing in his accompanied sonatas; and as in their Beethoven sonata cycle (Wigmore Hall Live), Tiberghien and Ibragimova form a close, creative partnership, abetted by a perfect recorded balance (in most recordings I know the violin tends to dominate). ‘Every phrase tingles,’ I jotted down frivolously as I listened to the opening Allegro of the G major Sonata, K301, truly con spirito, as Mozart asks, and combining a subtle flexibility with an impish glee in the buffo repartee.
Tiberghien and Ibragimova take the opening Allegro of the E minor Sonata, K304, quite broadly, emphasising elegiac resignation over passionate agitation. But their concentrated intensity is compelling both here and in the withdrawn—yet never wilting—minuet. Especially memorable are Ibragimova’s chaste thread of tone in the dreamlike E major Trio, and Tiberghien’s questioning hesitancy when the plaintive Minuet theme returns, an octave lower, after the Trio.
In the G major Sonata, K379, rapidly composed for a Viennese concert mounted by Archbishop Colloredo just before Mozart jumped ship, Tiberghien and Ibragimova are aptly spacious in the rhapsodic introductory Adagio (how eloquently Tiberghien makes the keyboard sing here), and balance grace and fire in the tense G minor Allegro. In the variation finale their basic tempo sounds implausibly jaunty for Mozart’s prescribed Andantino cantabile, though objections fade with Tiberghien’s exquisite voicing of the contrapuntal strands in the first variation. I enjoyed the latest of the sonatas, K481, unreservedly, whether in the players’ exuberant give-and-take in the outer movements or their rapt, innig Adagio, where Ibragimova sustains and shades her dulcet lines like a thoroughbred lyric soprano. Having begun this review in grudging mode, I’ll end in the hope that these delightful, inventive performances presage a complete series of Mozart’s mature violin sonatas, with or without a smattering of childhood works. (Gramophone)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K11, K12, K302, K380, K526, K570, Variations K359

This revelatory series from Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien benefits from offsetting works of Mozart’s middle-period and maturity with some of his earliest compositions. One of the joys of this set, expertly played and annotated (by Misha Donat), is the way these outstanding artists subtly shade the two early sonatas of 1764, fully endorsing Mozart’s original instruction that they ‘can be played with the accompaniment of a violin or transverse flute’. Accordingly, Ibragimova moves in and out of the textures as though applying deft touches of colour and shading to Tiberghien’s musical canvas. Both players keep everything perfectly in scale, voicing the eight-year-old genius’s inspiration with a poetic radiance that captures the ingenuous mood to perfection.

K302 in E flat major (1778) combines thematic intensity—complete with pseudo-orchestral skyrocket crescendos over a recurring figuration—with a heart-warming lyrical glow. Tiberghien shapes Mozart’s sighing figurations and passing chromaticisms with a lilting temporal sensitivity, while Ibragimova uses vibrato sparingly, preferring to colour her tone with micro-inflected bow strokes of infinite subtlety. Their combined musical imagination feels so intertwined that it emerges seemingly as the natural extension of a single interpretative personality.

This sense of gentle ecstatic communion is nowhere more acutely sensed than in the sonata many consider the finest of the series: K526 in A major of August 1787. Once again, so keenly attuned are Tiberghien and Ibragimova to each other’s musical proclivities, that at the point of contact it is difficult to imagine this score being played any other way. (Julian Haylock / BBC Music Magazine)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K8, K13, K26, K28, K303, K377, K378, K403, Variations K360

Such was Mozart’s creative genius that even when, as here, sonatas composed 17 years apart are juxtaposed against one another, one barely experiences a creative jolt. It also underlines how successfully Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien immerse themselves in Mozart’s earliest published boyhood works as compared to the bracing genius of the music that poured forth during his mid-twenties. Those listeners used to the air of ‘greatness’ and expressive high-projection brought to the later works by Henryk Szeryng (Philips/Decca) and Itzhak Perlman (DG), in their very different ways, may initially feel a shade short-changed. Yet it is the Hyperion team who time and again demonstrate that a more intimate approach works wonders in capturing the essence of these exquisitely melodious and immaculately structured scores.

In the earliest work featured here, K8 in B flat, it feels as though centuries of interpretative accretion has been removed as Ibragimova and Tiberghien take flight in the opening Allegro with a bracing sense of forward momentum that creates the uncanny impression of floating on air. The tricky Minuet finale also goes like a dream, with no self-conscious pointing of the dance rhythms or furrowed-brow introspection when the music turns towards the minor key. By the time he composed the C major Sonata, K403, Mozart was interspersing major and minor modes with infinite more subtlety, and here the exquisite finesse of this cherishable team put them in a class apart. (Julian Haylock / BBC Music Magazine)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K27, K31, K296, K306, K454, K547

This seasoned duo's two-disc-for-one Mozart package takes in six works spanning more than 20 years from the two juvenile essays (K27, K31) of 1766 to his final sonata, K547 ('For Beginners'), of 1788. It is true to its 'for keyboard and violin' billing, because pianist Cédric Tiberghien's contribution sounds consistently more prominent than that of his partner. Such a recorded imbalance may be intentional, given the overall lesser significance of the violin part in most of these works; but it is a miscalculation in the more equitably matched K454, where Ibragimova seemingly underplays the grandeur of its introductory Largo and is too distant in its playful Allegro and jovial rondo. Even in the expressive, more violin-centric Andante, one begs a more balanced listening experience.

Nevertheless, these two outstanding Mozartians give characteristically intelligent, individual and invigorating accounts on modern instruments. They demonstrate unanimity of intent, refined musicianship, alert, vital phrasing and excellent timing; sample the buoyant rhythms and crisply articulated passagework of the outer movements of K296 and the honeyed cantilena of its Andante sostenuto. They bring out the full quirkiness of the two early sonatas, Ibragimova introducing some playful interpolations into the Allegro of K31. Both players skilfully characterise its Tempo di menuetto variations.

Their reading of K547 is persuasive, Ibragimova adding subtleties of nuance and rubato and occasionally taking some of the limelight. Her silky-toned, lyrical playing in the expressive central movement of K306 is an aural delight, and both protagonists revel in the humour, drama and sheer invention of the ensuing operatic finale. (Robin Stowell / The Strad)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K6, K7, K9, K15, K29, K305, K376,K402

Alina Ibragimova is, in many ways, an ideal interpreter for this double disc of (mainly) early Mozart sonatas. Ibragimova's interest in 'modern' as well as 'period-instrument' playing is reflected in a sensitive reading (here on modern instruments) and her sense of period taste conforms very much to current expectations of Mozart performance—the sound, delivered with immaculate cleanliness, is well-balanced and translucent, with sparing vibrato, intelligent, small-scale phrasing, and some fastidious pianism by Cédric Tiberghien.

The performances are extremely consistent technically and musically, but one might draw out, for example, the lively, clean voicing of the first movement of K402 and a thoughtful fugal second movement. The D major Sonata K7 includes a prescient slow movement, full of proto-Romantic gestures. The final A major Sonata ends the set with a well-known and loved work, delivered with aplomb.

There are few limitations here that can be voiced reasonably, although a little more fire might energise the rhetorical gestures in the B flat major Sonata's first movement. This really is splitting hairs, though, and such aspects create a more human connection with performances hat are otherwise almost too perfect to be fully relatable. Overal, however, this is a very enjoyable pair of discs. (David Milsom / The Strad)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien BRAHMS Violin Sonatas

‘Such a well-established and often inspirational musical partnership that I inevitably had high hopes for their Brahms sonatas, and I’m so happy to report that they were in no way disappointed. Right from the start (the first movement of the G major sonata), there’s a confessional intimacy that allows them to steadily build over the entire ten minute span of the first movement to a properly ecstatic conclusion rarely achieved as well as it is here. No extreme tempos, an unerring sense of give and take—you might be surprised how many estimable players don’t seem to know when to allow the other party to take the limelight. The climaxes are telling, without hectoring. They allow the music to speak eloquently, conversationally, surprisingly gently sometimes, and the recording is as well balanced as the playing. I have a handful of favourite recordings of the Brahms violin sonatas that will now have to shuffle up to make space for this one.’ (BBC Record Review)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien VIERNE - FRANCK Violin Sonatas YSAYE Poème élégiaque

While we’re not short of top-drawer recordings of Franck’s Violin Sonata, I’m still not sure whether I’ve ever encountered it sitting within such a musically and musicologically tempting programme as this one from Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien. Not, I might add, that the Franck Sonata should necessarily be seen as the main event here, despite its fame. Au contraire, one of the chief draws is the way it sits in equal balance within the whole, each work informing and being informed by its neighbours.

To deal first with the programming, all paths (or almost all paths) lead back to the great French violinist Eugène Ysaÿe: his Poème élégiaque of 1892, based on the tomb scene of Romeo and Juliet, followed by the Franck Sonata, which was a wedding present to him in 1886, and the 1908 Violin Sonata he commissioned from Franck’s fellow organist-composer Louis Vierne. Then a final petit four in the form of Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne, written only three years after the Vierne but ushering in a new era with its slightly leaner aesthetic and its final little quotation from Debussy’s L’après-midi d’une faune.

As for the actual sound, superb playing and ravishing engineering intertwine here to stunning effect. It’s a modern set-up – Ibragimova on a 1775 Anselmo Bellosio strung with metal, with Tiberghien on a very beautiful and relatively new Steinway D – and it serves as a reminder that you don’t necessarily need period instruments to bring a lightness and air-filled delineation to these densely textured late-Romantic works. (In fact, note here that if your personal taste is for something slightly lusher-textured or bigger-boned then you may wish to stick with Dumay and Pires, or perhaps Hadelich and Yang).

Still, listen to the sombre depth and steadily direct tone Ibragimova brings to the Poème élégiaque’s central grave et lent section, and the rich sonority of Tiberghien’s accompanying death knells. Or the gripping passion with which Ibragimova delivers both its soaring long lines and its virtuoso moments.

Moving on to the Franck, soak up the weightless, time-suspended softness with which they begin: from Ibragimova a sweet, even sound that’s light-toned without being lightweight, supported by a touch from Tiberghien at the keyboard that sounds like mellow, amber-hued raindrops, and all the while a gradual crescendo and strengthening of tone from both so subtle that it happens almost imperceptibly. Another joy is the expansive third movement with its succession of contrasts between crescendos to climaxes – which come long-spun, unegged and noble from Ibragimova – and the softest and sweetest of pianissimo dolcissimo interludes. Then after that, hear the further contrast provided by the final movement’s sunny-hued velocity.

The Vierne Allegro risoluto equally showcases sharper-edged energy, and yet more golden tenderness with its Andante sostenuto. Add the palette-cleansing Boulanger, and this is wall-to-wall wonderful. (Charlotte Gardner / Gramophone)

Cédric Tiberghien / Orchestre national d'Île-de-France / Enrique Mazzola LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Concerto pour piano No. 1 - Symphonie No. 5

A veritable celebration cocktail, this album has been conceived as a showcase of Beethoven’s orchestral and pianistic genius.
Cédric Tiberghien and the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, conducted by Enrique Mazzola, have come together for their first recording after enjoying five years of collaboration on the stage.

Cédric Tiberghien BARTÓK

'An admirable performance of the Sonata for two pianos and percussion, where Tiberghien is both goaded and kept in check by fellow pianist François-Frédéric Guy, with sensitive support from the percussionists Colin Currie and Sam Walton. Superb sound sees to it that every kicking syncopation and drum tap is clearly focused' (Gramophone)

Cédric Tiberghien’s Bartók series has been an ear-opener—expressive and sharp-witted performances that clinch the music’s essence in original terms. The French pianist has saved some of Bartók’s most straight-up tuneful material for last, and this instalment includes the Three Hungarian Folksongs from the Csík District (melodies Bartók learned in summer 1907 from a Transylvanian flute player), the Three Rondos on Slovak Folk Tunes and the slight, blithe Sonatina. Tiberghien balances these with the knotty Études and the thick-set Sonata—and through it all, the angular and the earthy, he has a way of making Bartók’s rhythms sound simultaneously stretchy, precise and personal. He’s joined by fellow pianist François-Frédéric Guy and percussionists Colin Currie and Sam Walton for the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion from 1926—jostling, gracious, deft playing to round off the disc. (Kate Molleson / The Guardian)

Cédric Tiberghien BARTÓK

Cédric Tiberghien's first CD for Hyperion of Bartok's piano music was brilliant from start to finish (reviewed in June 2016). The 47 tracks of this new one are of the same standard, barring just one: his account of Allegro barbaro is polite, neatly controlled and utterly lacking in anything remotely 'barbaric'. For the rest, his approach is admirably responsive as he explores, one by one, the enticing little abodes of Bartók's great compositional experiment. Who would dream that a piece entitled 'Major seconds broken and together'—and lasting less than two minutes—could constitute a uniquely beautiful sound world?

Bartok described his 4 Bagatelles—with their implicit nod back to Beethoven—a representing 'a new piano style… a reaction to the exuberance of Romantic piano music of the 19th century; a style stripped of all unnecessary decorative elements, deliberately using only the most restricted technical means.' Those words could apply to almost everything on this disc.

As David Cooper observes in his illuminating liner note, the first of these Bagatelles—to be played in four sharps in the right hand, and four flats in the left—was one of the earliest essays in bi-tonality by a European composer, and in Tiberghien's hands it becomes both simple-seeming and profoundly challenging. He gives the Folk Dances and the Eight Improvisations a relaxed and full-blooded sound evoking courtships and comic mock-fights through their furious or flirtatiously irregular, tempos.

He's sparing with the pedal, but on occasions uses it to make simple figurations sound bewitching, most notably in Bagatelle No 12, which prefigures the 'night music' style of later works. Intimate and poetic, this is pianism which delicately suggests rather than making statements. A lovely hour and a quarter. (Michael Church / BBC Music Magazine)

Cédric Tiberghien BARTÓK

Bartók's piano music has the appearance of simplicity, and many of its notes are mere grace-notes, so the games which Bartók plays with rhythm and counterpoint, and with moments of impressionism, make very special demands on the pianist. Possessing an instinctive feel for that impressionism, and for the ebb and flow of those rhythms with their little hesitations and sudden rushes forward, Cédric Tiberghien is ideally fitted for this task. Moreover the selection of works on this CD makes a very satisfying survey of the Bartókian piano œuvre.

Every piece here is in one way or another an experiment, including the unassuming little Suite, whose Allegretto and Scherzo reflect the composer's researches into Romanian and North African styles respectively, while its concluding Sostenuto floats and dreams in a very Debussian manner. Out of Doors brings one of Bartók's most magical piece of night-music with softly-whirring hover-flies, croaking frogs and chirruping birds: here Tiberghien is in his element, as he is with the bagpipe-evocations via vibrating trills and slammed chordal dissonances. He wittily brings out the drunkenness in the second Burlesque—you can visualise the stumbling belching figure—and for 'Quarrel' he turns on some effortless virtuosity.

But the chief glory of this recording lies in what Tiberghien does with the Peasant Songs and the sixth book of Mikrokosmos. Each of the songs is sharply characterised and the pulse throughout follows the heartbeat. Meanwhile Mikrokosmos is delivered with charm, each note perfectly weighted, and with the concluding display of Bulgarian rhythms making a brilliant envoi to the record as a whole. (Michael Church / BBC Music Magazine)

Antoine Tamestit / Cédric Tiberghien BEL CANTO

Going well beyond mere historical interest, this album unveils the charms of a repertoire that delighted Parisian concert halls and salons throughout the 19th century. It demonstrates how the viola finally emerged from the violin’s shadow thanks to virtuoso playing, now resuscitated by the talent of Antoine Tamestit and Cédric Tiberghien in pieces which offer much more than the exquisite languors of bel canto. Italian for 'beautiful singing' or 'beautiful song', the term remains vague and ambiguous but is commonly used to evoke a lost singing tradition; in this case the famed singing tone of Antoine Tamestit's viola, a 1672 Stradivarius, loaned by the Habisreutinger Foundation.

Born in Paris, Antoine Tamestit studied with Jesse Levine at Yale University and with Tabea Zimmermann. He has won several coveted prizes including the William Primrose Competition, first prize at the Young Concert Artists (YCAT) international auditions, a place on BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists Scheme and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award.

Antoine Tamestit’s distinguished discography includes Berlioz’s 'Harold en Italie', which was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev and released in 2015 by LSO Live. For Naïve he has recorded three of the Bach Suites, Hindemith solo and concertante works recorded with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and Paavo Järvi, and an earlier recording of 'Harold' with Marc Minkowski and Les Musicians du Louvre.

This particular diva is the viola; its servant is Antoine Tamestit, here making his first solo recording for harmonia mundi. (Presto Classical)

Cédric Tiberghien SZYMANOWSKI Masques - Métopes - Études Op. 4 - Études Op. 33

Karol Szymanowski was never a concert virtuoso but knew the piano inside out, writing music that, despite its often complex textures, is always beautifully laid out for the hands. It has never caught the imagination of the general public, with perhaps the exception of the dolorously lovely B flat Étude from Op 4, clearly modelled on Chopin’s B minor Prelude. This early set was composed between 1900 and 1902, when Scriabin was a major influence, though the bitonal opening of the last of the four hints at wrhat was to come. The distance travelled can be measured by the second set of (12) Études from 1916, dedicated to Alfred Cortot: epigrammatic (none lasts more than two minutes), tonally enigmatic, extremely difficult and played as a sequence without break.

The three Métopes from 1915 (a metope here is a sculptured panel in a Doric frieze)—‘L’île des Sirenes’, ‘Calypso’ and ‘Nausicaa’—recall ‘the leavening, salutary influence of Ravel’s and Debussy’s weightless, diaphanous textures’ (to quote Francis Pott in his booklet-note) and rely ‘upon a performer of fastidious polyphonic instincts and acute subtlety’. The studied spontaneity of the three Masques (1915-16)—‘Shéhérazade’, ‘Tantris le Bouffon’ and ‘La Sérénade de Don Juan’—again defy structural analysis, their titles having no immediately obvious connection with the music.

But if I personally find it hard to respond positively to these elusive tone-poems, one can have no reservations about Cédric Tiberghien’s playing throughout this absorbing disc.

His quite extraordinary tonal palette and acute observation of the composer’s fastidious notation are beyond reproach, a masterclass in refined virtuosity. (Jeremy Nicholas / Gramophone)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien RAVEL Complete Music for Violin & Piano LEKEU Sonata

Maurice Ravel’s mature works for violin and piano have established a central place in the core recital repertoire and are considered among the most popular of the genre. These diverse works acknowledge the influences of a range of musical styles from jazz to Impressionism and fuse the tonal colours of Debussy with the lyricism of Franck.

The posthumously published one-movement Violin Sonata, written by Ravel as a student, is a lyrical precursor to the composer’s stunning Violin Sonata in G major with its unique character and adoption of the ‘blues’ idiom. The spontaneity, tonal colours and exotic soundscapes in Ravel’s violin music call for immense skill in interpretation, and passages in the frenzied Tzigane test the limits of the performers’ virtuosity.

Violinist Alina Ibragmiova rises to these challenges with extraordinary verve. Recent winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s prestigious ‘Young Artist of the Year’ award, she displays a vast expressive range and interpretative maturity. She is accompanied by pianist Cédric Tiberghien, who gives elegant and flawless performances and relishes Ravel’s iridescent piano parts.

The addition of Guillaume Lekeu’s masterwork, the extensive and engaging Violin Sonata, makes this major new release a chamber disc to treasure. (Hyperion Records)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien SCHUBERT Complete Works for Violin and Piano

The luminous partnership of Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien returns to Hyperion for this double album containing Schubert’s complete music for violin and piano. Their intelligence and technical prowess, their seamless and intimate connection as performers and their profound understanding of the music combine in magical performances.

While still in his teens, Schubert wrote four works for violin and piano that could have been given the label ‘sonata’, yet none of the four was published with that title. The first three, completed in 1816, bear instead the designation of ‘Sonatina’, perhaps to appeal to the amateur market. But these are highly accomplished works by the teenage composer and there is little ‘domestic’ feeling in the extended, mysterious unravellings of D385 which hint at compositions yet to come.

The later Violin Sonata in A major, D574 (now described as a ‘Duo’), urges the violinist on to greater virtuosic feats, and the Rondo in B minor even more so, with the piano sometimes treated as a surrogate orchestra. The extensive Fantasy in C major, written in the last year of Schubert’s life, is a masterpiece: the composer’s greatest achievement in this genre, which combines poignancy with sheer joy in life itself.

Beautiful and touching … the performances of the virtuoso Rondo brillant and Fantasie are exhilarating; the Rondo combining lively momentum with a sense of poise and the Fantasie beautifully characterised in all its varied aspects. Especially fine are the episodes in Hungarian style, full of energy and grace, and the barnstorming finale, rivalling the famous 1931 recording of Busch and Serkin' (Gramophone)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas - 3

Ibragimova and Tiberghien have already received universally positive praise for the first two instalments of their Beethoven sonata cycle, so expectations run high for this third and final disc. Although I haven't heard the previous two, listening to this one I can well understand what the fuss was all about, for this is seriously accomplished Beethoven interpretation. The players have an extraordinary rapport, yet both put their individual stamp on the work, essential for any great Beethoven performance. 

The three discs each record a single Wigmore Hall recital, hence the jumping around the chronology of the sonatas. The absence of any late period works in the cycle makes this a practical arrangement. It is not like the string quartets, where serious thought has to be given to which early works to pair with the late quartets. Instead, the slightly less Titanic Opp. 47 and 96 can each close a concert with appropriate gravitas and without completely stealing the show. 

Ibragimova and Tiberghien are at their best in the earlier sonatas anyway. The young(ish) Beethoven was working at a time when the duo sonata was in a state of transition, with the balance gradually shifting in favour of the melody instrument over the keyboard. The genius of these performances is in the way that the players are able to keep that question of balance open. They are often equal partners, but just as often, one or other will take the lead, initiating elaborate semiquaver runs or suddenly dominating the texture with some florid decorative figure. But everything here is fluid, and none of these power imbalances lasts for long. 

I'm particularly struck by the way that both players are able to change their volume and timbre instantaneously mid-phrase, and to change the course of that phrase as a result, a quiet conclusion, for example, retrospectively taking all the bravura out of an imposing opening statement. 

Ibragimova has a fairly light tone. It is certainly attractive, and there is plenty of variety too, but if there is anything to say against this recording it is that the narrowness of that violin sound may not be to everybody's taste. She has a surprising ability to create airy, floating textures despite this reedy sound. In the second movement of Op.30 No.1, for example, the violin breezes across the piano textures with wonderful delicacy, but still with that slight edge to the sound. 

It works well there, but for me the Kreutzer needs something else. It needs a sense of weight from the violin that only comes from a big, round sound. The playfulness that brings the violin parts of the earlier sonatas to life seems almost to trivialise the Kreutzer's sterner textures. And Tiberghien holds back a little too much in some of the louder passages. That complex power balance between the keyboard and the violin becomes an outright paradox in the Kreutzer, with the piano line often looking like a solo part, but forced into the role of an accompaniment by the equally arresting violin part. There are a number of places where the violin and piano right hand ought to be working as equal partners, but what we always hear is the violin with the piano's figurations subsumed. No matter, Beethoven asks for the impossible, and this is one legitimate way to square the circle. 

 Wigmore Hall Live manage their usual high standard of audio recording here. I love the way that they are always able to capture the ambience of the hall's warm acoustic, making it almost the third player in the mix. All round an impressive recording, then, not the last word in Beethoven sonatas, but then how could it be? If anything that is a virtue; the subjectivity of these readings brings the players themselves, and their own attitudes to the music, clearly into focus. The interpretations are coherent and mature, and the teamwork between the players is what makes the recording something special. (Gavin Dixon, MusicWeb International)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas - 2

Beethoven produced a total of 10 sonatas for violin and piano during his career, the majority of which came early on when the composer himself was still a young man and the violin sonata as a genre was yet to be entirely defined. Although many of the world's most seasoned, venerable performers have laid down recordings of these great compositions, there's something to be said about youthful, fresh bright-eyed performers tackling the sonatas of a composer who was very much still making a name for himself. Second in a series of recitals devoted to the 10 violin sonatas, this Wigmore Hall album features a live recording of violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cédric Tiberghien performing the sonatas Opp. 12/2, 24, and 96. Not only do both musicians possess a wonderfully polished, refined technique on their respective instruments, but also a stunning degree of musical sophistication and maturity. Ibragimova's playing is carefree but accurate, and full of brazen risk-taking that pays off again and again. Tiberghien is much more than just a sensitive accompanist, but rather a full partner in what quickly proves to be a true dialogue between the instruments. Every aspect of their venture -- dynamics, phrasing, articulation, pacing, balance -- match seamlessly from the very beginning. Although Op. 96 is not as youthful as the other two on this album, Ibragimova and Tiberghien prove that they are just as capable and comfortable delivering this mature, introspective work as well. Listeners should look forward to the release of the remainder of what is sure to be a memorable survey. (Mike D. Brownell)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas - 1

Cédric Tiberghien and Alina Ibragimova first met as members of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme in 2005. Immediately finding a rare musical and personal rapport, they performed together in a number of studio sessions and in concerts at the Wigmore Hall and at festivals around the UK. The unique partnership which developed between the two artists was picked up by ‘The Times’ who concluded its review of Cédric and Alina’s final recital as part of New Generation Artists, at the 2007 Cheltenham Festival, by commenting “Both of these players have the potential to conquer the world”.
The duo went on to perform throughout Europe and in North America, appearing in venues including the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Theatre des Champs Elysées in Paris, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, the Carnegie Hall in New York, the Vancouver Recital Society, as well as a major Musica Viva tour of Australia. The duo is also a regular guest of the Wigmore Hall in London, where it presented an acclaimed complete cycle of the Beethoven violin sonatas in the 2009/10 season. Future plans include extensive touring in Asia (Taipei, Nagoya, Tokyo and Hong Kong), an appearance at the prestigious San Francisco Performances series, and a complete Mozart sonata cycle at the Wigmore Hall in London.

Cédric and Alina’s Beethoven cycle was recorded for a three-volume release on the ‘Wigmore Live’ label, attracting unanimous praise from the press. International Record Review gave each volume its “IRR Outstanding Recording” award, commenting that “In every way, it proves an extraordinary achievement”. The Times was equally enthusiastic: “Spontaneous, impulsive, young and fresh, the violinist Ibragimova and the pianist Tiberghien make an electrifying partnership”. (Askonas Holt )