Heartstrings

J S Bach Arioso; Elgar Salut d’Amour, Op. 12; Massenet Meditation from Thaïs; Fritz Kreisler Liebeslied (Love’s Sorrow); Tchaikovsky Canzonetta, Op. 35; Bach/Gounod Ave Maria; Richard Strauss Morgen! Op. 27 No. 4*; Rachmaninoff Vocalise, Op. 34 No. 14; William Grant Still Mother and Child; John Williams Theme from Schindler’s List Jessie Montgomery Peace; Vittorio Monti Czardas.

Sonia Lee (violin), Benjamin Loeb (piano), with Allison Charney (soprano)*.
St7dio — Classical S7CHS0826
Available in CD & HD downloads

There is a particular pleasure in hearing pieces you already know intimately played as though for the first time, and that is exactly what violinist Sonia Lee and Grammy-nominated pianist Benjamin Loeb achieve on Heartstrings, a programme of favourites and encores that most collectors will already own in one guise or another, scattered across a dozen different discs, but rarely gathered together as satisfyingly as this.

Lee's playing is the chief pleasure here: a rich, dark lower register set against an upper range that never turns thin or effortful, the two extremes balanced with real care. Given that every item on this disc is well known, even over-familiar, there was every danger of the readings sounding routine. That they never do is entirely to Lee's credit, aided by Loeb's discreet, listening accompaniments, which never once try to steal the show.

The familiarity, in fact, becomes the point. You may well have heard Massenet's Méditation from Thaïs a hundred times, yet Lee finds a fresh route through it here, and John Williams' theme from Schindler's List, which can so easily tip into cliché, instead stops you in your tracks. Loeb's account of the piano introduction to Rachmaninov's Vocalise tells its own quiet story before Lee has even drawn her bow, and the pair are equally persuasive in Vittorio Monti's Czárdás, moving from mournful opening to a headlong, gypsy-flavoured conclusion with real theatrical instinct, rounding the disc off in style.

The one genuine surprise is the late arrival of Grammy-nominated soprano Allison Charney, who joins the duo for Richard Strauss's "Morgen!", from his Op. 27 songs — beautifully sung and worth the wait.

The disc's own billing casts Heartstrings as Lee's response to what she sees as the diminishing place of classically trained musicians amid AI and mass communication, borrowing Swift's image of the brilliant but incomplete scholars of Laputa in Gulliver's Travels, who for all their learning still needed music. Lee's own conclusion — that musicians remain "ambassadors" of something classical music alone supplies — is a large claim for a covers album to carry, but the playing does most of the persuading for her. The wider programme, not all of it heard here, ranges from Bach and Elgar to William Grant Still, Jessie Montgomery and Gounod, alongside the pieces above.

I came to this disc expecting comfortable, undemanding listening and found myself, rather against my better judgement, moved by pieces I thought I knew far too well to be moved by again. Heartstrings is a fair title, then, and an honest one: it tugs at exactly the place it promises to.