Daniel Gaede - Brahms: Complete Violin Sonatas, Opp. 78, 100 & 108 (2011/2020)

'Every drop / deep shuddered to the beating of the heart.' Whether the theme of the rain song, based on a poem by Klaus Groth, which Brahms hints at in the finale of his G major sonata, gave the composer the attitude for the piece under whose friendly, carefree surface you can hear the pounding of a nervous heart? Brahms dedicated the Sonata op. 78 to Clara Schumann's son Felix, who died of tuberculosis in 1879 and whose death affected him very much: Felix was his godchild. In Brahms' other two violin sonatas, too, the musical content is not always evident, but has to be uncovered from the thicket of motifs that Brahms spans over the movements. There is little to be gained here with soloistic attitudes, and so the quality of the new recording of the three sonatas with the violinist Daniel Gaede and the pianist Xuesu Liu lies primarily in the chamber music consonance with which they trace the emotional facets of this multi-layered music - at the highest technical level and with a creative sovereignty that always lets the music speak for itself.