Ferdinand Ries Sonatas for Violin and Piano 3

Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838) was close friends with Beethoven. They both studied with Ferdinand's father.  They both absorbed the Viennese milieu. You do not hear Beethoven in Ries's music so much as you hear Austria in both their musics. And in the recent volume Sonatas for Violin and Piano 3 (Naxos 8.573862) you hear Ries, a talented composer with a good deal of inventive elegance and lyrical charm, a composer who quite clearly learned from Mozart and Haydn and made of it all something of his own.

Eric Grossman on violin and Susan Kagan on piano show us that they have fully absorbed the Ries style and give us a very fine set of performances for the three sonatas represented here.

And the music itself is inventive, valued, bright and shimmering in a Late Classical mode. There are thematic elements that you appreciate as you become more familiar with the music and indeed, the music wears well with many listens, more so than with less! It is music to live with, as all worthwhile music should be.

Very recommended.