Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Sonate pour violon et piano n° 1 en sol majeur, op. 78
Sonate pour violon et piano n° 2 en la majeur, op. 100
Sonate pour violon et piano n° 3 en ré mineur, op. 108

Johannes Leertouwer, violon
Julian Reynolds, piano

L’expressivité des trois sonates de Brahms ne révèle ni la volonté dramatique de leur modèle, assurément celui de Beethoven, ni le souci de s’inspirer du classicisme hérité de Mozart. En revanche, c’est bien vers la ballade ou le lied qu’il faut se tourner. Ces trois "Chants sans paroles" – pour reprendre le titre des célèbres recueils de piano de Mendelssohn – démontrent chez Brahms, une étonnante faculté pour traduire l’intimité et le privilège de l’âge comme le souffle encore perceptible de la jeunesse. Une jeunesse non point exaltée et instinctive, mais raffinée si l’on en croit la conception des deux artistes. Chaque phrasé, chaque intonation a été pensée et il est vrai que Johannes Leertouwer est un spécialiste de Brahms, de son interprétation "historiquement informée". Le piano que joue Julian Reynolds est un Blüthner Grand Piano de 1857. Les recherches entreprises notamment sur les phrasés et les tempi ainsi que le vibrato affinent la présente interprétation. Une finesse de jeu qui est au service d’une grande flexibilité et liberté de ton. L’auditeur ressent une approche des plus naturelles. La Sonate n° 3 - peut-être la plus ambitieuse sur le plan technique et d’un caractère plus violemment expressif que les opus précédents - gagne ainsi en clarté, préservant à la fois un esprit aristocratique et l’idée d’une fantaisie comme improvisée. Ce sont certainement les leçons qu’il faut retirer de cette lecture : elle impose une fraîcheur de ton agréable même si les couleurs particulières du piano ancien peuvent heurter. On a peu l’habitude d’entendre ce type d’instrument dans le répertoire du romantisme tardif. (Jean Dandrésy)

We made this recording in January 2023, one week before I defended my dissertation on historically informed performance practice of Brahms’s orchestral music at Leiden University and received my doctorate. The research had offered me the opportunity to re-investigate my ideas about contemporary performance style, particularly of 18th- and 19th-century repertoire. Over the course of the 4-year project, I had rehearsed, performed, and recorded the Brahms symphonies and concertos as a conductor. After so much reading, writing, and conducting, I found that I longed for the experience of applying what I had discovered as a violinist to find how it had changed my approach to Brahms’s chamber music. I called Julian Reynolds and asked if he would be willing to experiment with my findings. We had studied the Brahms violin sonatas together with Josef Suk in Vienna and Prague many years ago. We found a beautiful Blüthner grand piano of 1857 in the atelier of Andriessen pianos in Haarlem. Our recording represents our desire to find the freedom to apply the 19th-century expressive tools of flexibility of rhythm and tempo, of expressive legato, portamento and vibrato that have been largely forgotten or perhaps discarded over the course of last century. These tools cannot simply be dusted off and re-implemented. As I argued in my dissertation, working with them requires re-inventing them. Portamento for example was a hotly debated subject throughout the 19th century. There is no single model or example of how to apply it today. The same can be said about vibrato. What we can say with certainty is that in the violin methods of Louis Spohr and later Joseph Joachim and Andreas Moser, portamento was named as the first and most important means of expression for string players, and vibrato was described as an ornament. When it comes to flexibility of tempo, we can be sure that the 19th-century concept of tempo was more flexible, and that modifications of tempo were much more frequent than in more modern times. We know that Brahms had a particularly free and flexible way of performing his own music. Brahms himself famously refused to give metronome markings, writing that he could not find a meaningful relationship between his flesh and blood and such a mechanical instrument, a feeling perhaps inherited from Beethoven. He also wrote that any “sane musician” would take a different tempo every week.