David Grimal, Georges Pludermacher - Franck, Strauss: Violin Sonatas (2010)

Strauss was only 23 when he completed his E flat Sonata, with everything (except, perhaps, the symphonic poem, Aus Italien) that was destined to make him immortal as yet unwritten. The much recorded A major Sonata, on the other hand, is vintage Franck, completed only four years before he died, in 1890, as he approached his 68th birthday. In short, an intriguing coupling, the more so since both works emerged within the same two years, 1886-87.
The disc comes in Harmonia Mundi’s praiseworthy Les Nouveaux Interpretes bargain-price series designed to help younger artists. The French violinist David Grimal (a recent student of the Paris Conservatoire and winner of several prestigious prizes) is at his persuasive best in the soaring lyricism of Strauss’s opening movement, which in so many turns of phrase pre-echoes the romanticist to come. The slow movement is rightly played with the simple charm of a Mendelssohnian ‘Song without Words’, decorated by some delicately graceful Straussian arabesques from the pianist, the longer-established Georges Pludermacher, who however attacks the less mature finale as if it might have been intended for an outsize piano concerto, inevitably disturbing the balance all too often.
Franck’s Sonata confirmed my suspicion that Grimal is of a gentler musical disposition than Pludermacher, whose immediacy of response to this noble work’s con passione markings at times borders on the aggressive. And incidentally this is the only performance I can recall in which pianist and violinist make their own close-following first-movement entries at different tempos. Not, perhaps, a partnership made in heaven, but never an uncommitted moment from either player in a clear and vibrant recording.'