Brahms - Violin Sonata 3 [Frank/Serkin] Only a few days ago i played Brahms's Third Sonata with Znaider / Bronfman [5th March 2011], and this is quite a different reading indeed, and recording soundwise as well, Znaider is sweet, Frank is sour, the recording for Znaider is bright, Frank is dull and blunted, Znaider's tempos are slightly slow, but near ideal, Frank is all over the place with extreme speeds and ideas, the Frank / Serkin version sounds a recipe for disaster, so why do i like it so much?, maybe it's because they're both trying to be revolutionary, purposely trying to say something different from what everyone else is saying, well there's gains and losses, but never boredom or indifference.
Pamela Frank is an American Violinist, now 43 years old, she made this recording in 1996, the booklet has the colour theme of orange and black, and Serkin is photographed in monotone brown and orange, but Frank is photographed in colour, with deep blacks throwing the lighted areas into focus all the more, notice the highlights in the hair [photo of Frank by Julian Barton, and Serkin by Carol Weinberg], i like the lettering too, well laid out, black for Brahms, orange for the christian names, and white for the surnames, very nicely laid out and pleasing to the eye.
This is my second favourite disc of the Brahms Violin Sonatas [the first is Perlman / Ashkenazy], just a word about the recording, the piano is recorded in a very dull acoustic, the bass end of the piano sounds 'plomb plomb' instead of 'pling pling, dull and stunted, the treble end can be quite reverberant and ring in your ears, especially in fortissimos, the violin seems more suited to the recording, Pamela Frank seems to play with the idea of historical performance in mind, i don't know if it's some sort of gut strings, or the bow or her approach or what, but her playing can sound less sweet and singing, more sinewy and the tone dies quicker, plus she's very much a staccato player rather than legato, but in saying all of that, you still gotta hear these two, and what they bring to the table, oh and by the way, this very work by these two appeared in my Blog at the beginning of last year, i very much notice how my reviews were a lot shorter then! [19th January 2010].
On this listen, their interpretation of the first movement was fantastic, a nice gentle violin opening, high and sweet [0:00], yet sad too, i like the gentle rumblings on the piano, and both partners explode loud [0:35], and they create a nice intensity here, both of them get into the emotion under the skin of the notes on the page, there's a degree of respite to this forte [1:08], and yet both Serkin and Frank want to emphasize the turbulence of the music, with some odd sticky staccato endings [1:59], and they can plumb the murky depths [2:02], it's so nice the way they find deep emotion in the pages that Brahms wrote, they create a darker and quieter variation of the opening of the movement [3:14], which transitions in very nicely, and then the explosion again is also so intense [3:49], there's an anger there, it's very compelling indeed, Serkin again plumbs the bass depths [4:36], and Frank's playing can have a certain whine to it, right near the end there's a lovely coda-esque-ness! to Frank, and i like the way Serkin can plink those treble keys just so!, the closing section is sad [6:33], but there's a nice resolution to it all, and a feeling of acceptance and surrender too, there's is an intense reading i love.
Here's Itzhak Perlman and Daniel Barenboim playing the first movement on YouTube.
