Album information

With this release, PENTATONE presents in its Remastered Classics series another album where musical titans are at work. No less than Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, generally considered to be one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century , and Belgian violinist Arthur Grumiaux, the most important representative of the Franco-Belgian violin school as well as a truly great violin virtuoso, joined forces in Amsterdam in 1973 to record the Beethoven piano and violin sonatas nos. 1 and 5.
No composer before Beethoven treated the two instruments as equally as he did in his sonatas for piano and violin. In 1797 Beethoven embarked on a journey of writing ten sonatas for this combination. In the first sonata of his oeuvre of 10, a festive piece with a theatrical-dramatic opening, the two parts are already very much integrated. The violin has clearly lost its role of accompagnato instrument. By the time just a few years later that Beethoven composed his fifth ‘Spring’-sonata, one of the most beloved and lyrical pieces of music ever written by him, the piano and the violin had reached a complete synthesis. This unprecedented integration is magnificently revealed by Arrau and Grumiaux on this newly remastered multi-channel Philips Classics recording.