Adrian Adlam - Bartók: Violin Sonatas (2021)

When two people reach for a bow, it doesn't have to be the same. One takes the paper one, the other the one with horsehair - and this distribution is just as useful as that of the pen, by which the precision mechanic understands something different from the poet and the goose. In other words, as much as I was immensely moved by the musical remarks by the violinist Adrian Adlam and the pianist Thomas Hell, the confusing accompanying texts, distributed over the trilingual booklet, were not able to move me to the continued interest that I have shown in the sonatas that have been brought together here and are really excellent from the first to the last moment. But luckily you can close printed matter without having to worry about, for example, where would Bartók Béla sound like expressionist Arnold Schönberg in the first movement of the first sonata? The very own intoxication of sound with the most distant cimbalom, with the sublimated Lombardisms of the Hungarian language and music, the lines that are largely lost and yet again and again gathered together can only be confused with the eternally dissatisfied Viennese, because a completely different personality leads the way This first of a total of eight enormous complexes: I am unable to decide whether to crown the slow movement of the first or the eloquent molto moderato of the second duo sonata, the booming, gripping detonations, or the sometimes nebulous, sometimes filigree braids - Perhaps in the end it is due to the solo sonata after all, which already condenses the "entire Johann Sebastian Bach" in its first chord and, under Adlam's hands, took to me with all its suggestive power? This will be taught by further passages. Until then, I will treat the double album with the most praiseworthy sound as an artistically successful whole of the highest edifying value.