Admirers of the Strauss Violin Sonata will want to have Jascha Heifetz's 1934 recording with Arpad Sandor; no one else, in my experience, has realized so perfectly its youthful, Don Juan-like ardour. But Kremer and Maisenberg have a lot going for them. The recorded sound is superb, and so is the playing, in its unfailing refinement and in the perceptive way the colourful harmonic language is made more vivid by changes in tone quality and rhythmic emphasis. If Kremer and Maisenberg don't have the overall sweep or the warmly communicative quality of Heifetz/Sandor, the music's different facets are brilliantly set off against each other. The quirky scherzando passages in the finale are played with wonderful lightness and humour; the last of them, at the start of the coda (where Heifetz makes a cut), sets off the following peroration in the most exciting way.

The Dvorak, too, is full of delights, with Kremer persuasively lyrical in the songful first and third pieces (I don't remember hearing better violin octaves). The slow fourth piece (for me the highlight of the disc) demonstrates both players' superb control when playing quietly, inexorably drawing our attention to the point of deepest sadness (track 7, 5'46''). The folk-like second piece is very deliberately held back in a way that's perhaps a little self-conscious, and the same stylish but slightly arch manner reappears in the Kreisler Marche miniature. (The track listing for the Kreisler pieces is, by the way, in the wrong order.)

This is really beautiful duo playing, though. The disc comes highly recommended.

-- Duncan Druce, Gramophone [12/1999]