In Paris, Itzhak Perlman and Martha Argerich just have recorded a new album, to be released late 2016 on Warner Classics. It has been 18 years since their last album together: a live recital from the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. On that momentous occasion in 1998, the pair performed three of the 19th century’s most ambitious and enthralling works for violin and piano – Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, the Franck Violin Sonata and Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 1. The first two sonatas were released in 1999 by EMI Classics (now Warner Classics) in what was the pair’s only recording together until now.
The Schumann Violin Sonata will now at last be released alongside the new recordings from the Paris sessions, making the forthcoming album a fascinating ‘then and now’ portrait of how two living legends have evolved musically.
In addition to the 1998 recording, this milestone collaboration between Argerich and Perlman sees the duo explore three masterpieces from the Baroque to the Romantic in intimate chamber recital: Bach’s Violin Sonata No.4 in C Minor, BWV 1017, Schumann’s Fantasiestücke Op 73, and Brahms’s Scherzo from the Sonatensatz in C minor (the ‘F.A.E. Sonata’), dedicated to the great violinist Joseph Joachim.
