Four very different composers bound by searching for a solution to a question they were never asked: what to do with the violin and piano pairing after the dissolution of the “traditional” violin sonata?

This recital offered four equally disparate answers, delivered with all the artistry and intelligence one expects from performers and long-time collaborators such as violinist Leila Josefowicz and pianist John Novacek.

Debussy’s Sonata in G minor opened the program: his last completed work, signed “Musicien français,” composed as he lay dying in wartime Paris, its continuous-variation writing looking backward to Couperin and Rameau rather than forward to Romantic bravura. Josefowicz played it with her entire body, the melodic line’s slow unspooling as much danced as bowed, the finale’s tumultuous joy registering as gesture before it registered as sound.

Novacek’s piano, understated and coloristic by design rather than harmonically grounding, was shaped with an ear to the whole conversation; he was already, in this first work, no mere accompanist. The tension between a dying man’s circumstances and his music’s late-arriving brightness was, this way, made visible as well as audible.

Read the full review at Limelight