Johann Sebastian Bach, Ferruccio Busoni, Ludwig van Beethoven, Yuuko Shiokawa, András Schiff

Violinist Yuuko Shiokawa and pianist András Schiff build a programme of three sonatas around Ferruccio Busoni. Bach's Sonata No. 3 in E major BWV 1016 opens it, Beethoven's Sonata No. 10 in G major Op. 96 closes it, and Busoni's Sonata No. 2 in E minor Op. 36a stands at the centre, a work that owes a debt to both. Few composers of the twentieth century were as steeped in Bach as Busoni, and the sequence makes that lineage audible.

Shiokawa and Schiff are husband and wife, and this is their second duo album for ECM, after an earlier recording of Schubert's Fantasies. The sessions took place in December 2016 at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano, in collaboration with RSI Rete Due, with Manfred Eicher producing and Stephan Schellmann as engineer. Misha Donat wrote the booklet essay, and the cover photograph is by Fotini Potamia.

Busoni's sonata, published in 1901, borrows its overall shape from Beethoven's late sonatas. A slow opening and a Presto lead to the Bach chorale Wie wohl ist mir, stated in an Andante piuttosto grave and then varied over some seventeen minutes in the Andante con moto. The tune comes from the 1725 notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach. In the opening Adagio of the Bach sonata the two players take their time, and the slow movement becomes a quiet duet. Beethoven's Op. 96 is his last sonata for violin and piano. It moves through trills and a suspended Adagio espressivo to a short Scherzo and a closing Poco Allegretto, whose variations echo the Busoni.

Reviewing the disc in BBC Music Magazine, Paul Riley wrote that "the programming here is astute". He heard in the Beethoven "a miracle of trills and aerated felicities", the perfect foil to Busoni. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Harald Eggebrecht praised the way the duo brings out the many layers and eloquence of Busoni's music, and noted that Rafael Kubelík had once championed Shiokawa's career. In Rondo, Guido Fischer suggested that the rhapsodic odd-numbered movements of the Busoni could earn it the name of Brahms's fourth violin sonata.

This is the CD edition, ECM New Series 2510, released on 27 October 2017.