Fiona Maddocks 

Romance oubliée CD review – miniatures as rich as stories

Tabea Zimmermann and Thomas Hoppe keep the sentiment at bay on this fascinating recital disc
  
  

tabea zimmermann
Tabea Zimmermann: ‘mellow, salon charm’. Photograph: Marco Borggreve Photograph: Marco Borggreve/PR

Having completed her recordings for Myrios Classics of the viola works of Hindemith, Tabea Zimmermann and pianist Thomas Hoppe have turned to the lighter world of Romantic miniatures by 19th- and 20th-century composers from Vieuxtemps, Kodály and Vierne to Liszt – whose Romance oubliée, with its delicate broken chord figure and tender melody, gives the disc its title. The Bohemian Hans Sitt (1850-1922) had a reputation as a string pedagogue but his melancholy Albumblätter which open this recital disc deserve to be better known. Two Kreisler pieces, originally for violin, acquire a mellow, salon charm. Zimmermann and Hoppe capture the poetry of these works, in their hands free from sentiment and rich as short stories.

 

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