Leonidas Kavakos & Enrico Pace

Violin Sonata No. 9, nicknamed the ‘Kreutzer Sonata’, is the most famous of Beethoven’s ten sonatas for the violin and piano. Rodolphe Kreutzer, to whom the sonata was dedicated, refused to play it in public because he believed it to be ‘unplayable’. The Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, one of the most important musical magazines of the time, even referred to it as ‘musical terrorism’. It is true that the sonata makes exceptionally high demands of the performers’ technical control and intelligence. But Leonidas Kavakos and Enrico Pace prove throughout the evening that they remain the best of friends amidst perfect harmonies and sharp musical contradictions.