Beethoven: Violin Sonatas

For her first solo album on BIS Records, Alina Ibragimova has recorded the complete violin sonatas of Beethoven together with Cédric Tiberghien. As you would expect, the first violinist of the Chiaroscuro Quartet presents these masterworks of chamber music on historical instruments. While he plays a gut-string instrument, Tiberghien plays a fortepiano, a copy of a Viennese instrument from 1794. This new interpretation of Beethoven's violin sonatas brings us as close as possible to the sound world that listeners would have heard when these works were first performed around the turn of the 19th century. This first volume contains the three violin sonatas opus 12, the first that Beethoven published in Vienna, where he had already established himself as Mozart's successor. As was customary at the time, they are written "for harpsichord or fortepiano, accompanied by a violin", but following Mozart they are actually intended for both instruments simultaneously. The CD concludes with the "Spring Sonata", the most popular and probably most poetic of the violin sonatas. We look forward to the continuation of this undoubtedly groundbreaking recording series, of which the second and third volumes will be released shortly.