Leonidas Kavakos & Enrico Pace

With dizzyingly masterful playing and radiant charisma, Leonidas Kavakos is an in-demand soloist on the major concert stages. He regularly performs with the foremost orchestras and has been soloist with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra on several occasions. Chamber music is also close to his heart and in 2017, he took the stage at Konserthuset Stockholm together with pianist Yuja Wang. 

Now we hear him with pianist Enrico Pace, whose career was catapulted when he won the international Franz Liszt Competition in Utrecht in 1989. He often performs with musicians like Leonidas Kavakos and Frank Peter Zimmermann, and as a soloist with the major orchestras in Europe, North America and Asia. 

This concert includes violin sonatas by Beethoven and Bartók. Beethoven’s early Violin Sonata No. 1 is a lively piece that concludes with a playful rondo. Béla Bartók’s Violin Sonata No. 2 is even more rigorous. “Only a violinist of the highest calibre has any chance of learning them,” wrote Bartók in a letter about his violin sonatas. At the same time, the dancing rhythms of Hungarian folk music can be heard, for example in the second movement.

Ravel also took inspiration from other genres in his sonata, specifically jazz and blues. The concert concludes with César Franck’s Sonata in A major. The deep and beautiful harmonies helped make this piece one of his best known and most popular.