Unequal competitors

Mozart certainly need not be afraid of the music of his contemporaries. But what about the other way around? The Basel violinist Plamena Nikitassova and her accompanist Aline Zylberajch on the fortepiano present a CD that juxtaposes precisely these two worlds. It is certainly not the first attempt of this kind, but with works by Joseph Welsch, Friedrich Wilhelm Rust and Antoine Lacroix, composer names appear that are not all that familiar.

This recording opens up a rarely heard world of gallantry and the art of entertainment to the practiced ear. However, there is little evidence of the typical dualism of classical music and its motivic and thematic treatment; the focus of this music is on pleasure and amusement. There is, for example, the Sonata à Violin Solo col. Accompagnemento by Rust, in which the melodious violin forms the center of the music. It also makes sense that the five-movement work ends in an airy scherzando that still reveals baroque traits. Zylberajch accompanies discreetly on a beautiful-sounding fortepiano by Johann Andreas Stein (1792).

An exciting encounter also brings the Theme with variations from "Airs varieés pour un violon" by Joseph Welsch, which survives in a copy from Lübeck from 1795. Nikitassova plays the piece with equally lyrical and virtuoso passages on a violin by Jacobus Stainer (1659) with a melting tone and high art of phrasing. However, the reverberation of the Seewen church, where the CD was recorded, is occasionally distracting, which applies to the entire recording.

The circle of contemporaries is framed by two works by Mozart: the Violin Sonata K. 302 at the beginning and the Sonata for Piano and Violin K. 454 at the end. In their profound diversity, these compositions emphasize the certain arbitrariness of the other works, which, despite their quality, are primarily focused on their entertainment value. Mozart remains in a different league, which is underlined by Nikitassova's lively interpretations.