‘Was Weber born only to compose Der Freischütz?’ This rhetorical question – a gloss of Hans Pfitzner,Footnote ¹ which I quote from the album's back cover – announces this album's raison d’être: to rescue two works of Carl Maria von Weber's instrumental chamber music (the Piano Quartet op. 8/J76 and the Sonates progressives op. 10/J99–104) from relative obscurity in the imposing shadow cast by his celebrated, highly influential stage works. Whilst the story of Weber's declining prominence in concert life over the past century still remains to be fully written, the rediscovery of his extensive catalogue of instrumental works is surely a welcome development. At one time, Weber's four piano sonatas (especially the Sonata No. 2 in A flat, op. 39) stood alongside those of Beethoven as paragons of early German Romanticism; today they are scarcely heard.Footnote ² (The same, I hasten to add, could be said of many once-standard works by Hummel and Spohr that are sadly now the provenance of musicologists rather than concertgoers.) To that end, violinist Isabelle Faust and pianist Alexander Melnikov are to be commended for venturing beyond familiar territory with this addition to their already extensive Harmonia Mundi discography, which to date has focused on standard chamber music (and which includes a superb recording of Beethoven's complete sonatas for piano and violin).

It should be clarified at the outset that these are not world-premiere recordings. The Sonates progressives have a particularly long recorded history, with recordings of individual movements by several violin soloists of the twentieth-century ‘Golden Age’. Nor is this the first recording of the complete set; to my knowledge, that honour belongs to violinist Ruggiero Ricci and pianist Carlo Bussotti's album, recorded in 1954 (and a near-complete set, comprising Sonatas Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 5, was recorded in 1948 by the great Russian violinist Leonid Kogan and pianist Grigory Ginzburg). Nevertheless, if these sonatas were standard fare for violinists half a century ago, today only one movement remains in common circulation (and not even in its authentic version): the Larghetto of the Sonata No. 1, which was popularized in an arrangement by Fritz Kreisler that reassigns all of the piano's melodies to the violin, transforming Weber's musical dialogue into a soliloquy and relegating the piano to an unequivocally subordinate status.

Kreisler's meddling with Weber's score was certainly of its time and hardly unique (cf. his so-called Indian Lament, which is a similar, violin-centric arrangement of the slow movement from Dvořák's Sonatina, op. 100). But it serves by comparison to underscore what is special about Melnikov and Faust's approach in this album – namely, their treatment of these sonatas as bona fide chamber music, as accompanied keyboard sonatas (in the historical sense of that locution) rather than as solo violin works. Perhaps a few fallow decades for these sonatas served (to borrow a turn of phrase from Harold Bloom) to ‘clear imaginative space’ for a decidedly fresh approach.Footnote ³ Melnikov's choice to perform on a fortepiano (Salvatore Lagrassa, c. 1815) makes the break from mid-twentieth-century, bravura-violin interpretations all the more audible. To be sure, Melnikov emerges as protagonist throughout the set, his charisma and virtuosity matched (but never unduly overshadowed) by Faust in an engaging give-and-take that belies the potential for tonal mismatch between the fortepiano and the modern violin. The recording's warm tone and excellent balance was surely achieved through skilful recording and mixing but also by two imaginative artists with keen ears for musical interplay and a long history together both in the concert hall and recording studio.

Composed over just a few weeks in the autumn of 1810, the Sonates progressives originated in fulfilment of a commission from the publisher André, who intended a set of pleasant, relatively undemanding sonatinas suitable for domestic music making. The violin part's modest technical demands indicate that Weber strove to meet the commission's requirements, which, together with the tight deadline, seem to have caused him some consternation; in a letter to his friend Gottfried Weber, he described the composition of these six sonatas as ‘a wretched job [hundsvöttische Arbeit]’ that cost him ‘more sweat than the same number of symphonies’.Footnote ⁴ André nevertheless rejected the sonatas, as Weber recounted: ‘The wretch has sent me my sonatas back on the splendid grounds that they're too good and they ought to be much duller … in short, like [Johann-Sebastian] Demar's (and there's nothing worse in the world than this). I explained to him in succinct terms that I could not and would not ever write such rubbish and with that we parted somewhat grumpily’.Footnote ⁵ Simrock subsequently published the set in two volumes under the title Sonates progressives pour le Piano-Forté avec Violon obligé, composées et dediées aux amateurs.

Whilst one could hardly describe the miniature Sonates progressives as major contributions to the keyboard/violin-sonata repertoire – most movements hover around the three-minute mark – they comprise an undeniably charming set and incorporate a notably diverse range of styles and genres. Melnikov and Faust's keen sense for vivid characters makes the most of movements with ethnic titles, such as the bolero (entitled ‘Carattere espagnuola’) and ‘Air Polonais’ movements that frame the Sonata No. 2 and the ‘Air Russe’ and ‘Polacca’ of Nos. 3 and 4, respectively. The most ambitious movement is the set of variations on the aria ‘Warum musst’ ich dich je erblicken?’ from Weber's opera Silvana. Weber must have been pleased with the variations, as he created an expanded, standalone version for clarinet and piano (known as op. 33/J128) that remains a staple of clarinet recitals to this day. If the movement suffers from its rather foursquare phrase rhythm, Melnikov and Faust mitigate this effect, maintaining interest by exploring subtleties of timing, dynamic shading, and colour on each repeat (most brilliantly including a un-notated but highly effective switch to pizzicato chords in the repetition of the second strain of the ‘marcia maestoso’ variation). There is not a careless or perfunctory note in this performance, and Faust's instincts as chamber musician shine in her sensitive accompaniment that fleetly weaves around the piano's more virtuosic runs.

These artists are joined by violist Boris Faust (the violinist's brother) and cellist Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt for an equally impressive performance of Weber's piano quartet, which was completed in 1809. Clive Brown writes that this work ‘suggests comparison with Spohr's music of this period in its mixture of concerted and concertante elements’.Footnote ⁶ That is, although the piano introduces most of the main themes throughout the first movement, the strings subsequently elaborate them, most notably in the development section where motives are passed around concertante style. In this perhaps somewhat formulaic sonata form, the most unexpected element is Weber's clever treatment of the permeable boundary between the development and recapitulation, which is a play on the movement's opening (shown in Ex. 1a).Footnote ⁷ In the exposition, the primary theme (bars 1–15) is followed by a brief codetta; note the characteristic tonicization of the subdominant established by the violin's melodic A♭ (bar 16). This same A♭ returns conspicuously—once again in the violin—late in the development section (see Ex. 1b). In this passage, an expected perfect cadence in D minor is twice frustrated by a deceptive resolution, each time with a diminished-seventh chord in place of the expected, cadential tonic. But just when the quartet feels hopelessly lost, the violin seems to recognize its melodic A♭ and, by way of an enharmonic reinterpretation of the diminished-seventh chord, uses it to return to the tonic key, reprising the codetta idea (A♭–G–G♭–F) and ushering in the return of the main theme, now in a heroic unison. In Janet Schmalfeldt's Hegelian parlance, this passage shows the development ‘in the process of becoming’ the recapitulation, which is achieved without the conventional formal demarcation.Footnote ⁸ In this recording, the ensemble takes full advantage of this remarkable turn of events: after Melnikov's stormy, diminished-seventh triplets, Faust's A♭ (initially played harshly and without vibrato) subtly sweetens as she guides her cohort from D minor to the B flat major of the recapitulation.

Ex. 1

Weber, Piano Quartet in B flat Major, op. 8/i

The quartet's emotional core is surely its second movement (Adagio ma non troppo), which originated as a standalone movement completed in 1806,Footnote ⁹ and which Roman Hinke's lucid liner notes compare to the slow movement of Beethoven's ‘Ghost’ Trio. The ‘spooky’ quality of Weber's movement is enhanced in this recording by the strings’ non-vibrato performance of the sparse opening, an unsettling and disorientating passage that nicely sets up the tempestuous middle section. A Menuetto in G minor with a mock-ländlerisch Trio follows, and the quartet concludes with a boisterous finale that betrays Weber's gifts for charming themes and textural interplay among the parts (including a finely wrought fugato). This unjustly neglected work would be a welcome addition to the chamber repertoire, especially when it is performed with as much artistry and devotion as in this recording.

In sum, this album stands as a compelling case for reviving Weber's instrumental chamber music. One wonders what Melnikov, Faust and friends – having made this important contribution – will turn to for their next project and, more importantly, whether other artists at their level will follow suit.