James Ehnes (violin), Andrew Armstrong (piano) ChandosCHAN10752****

It was Schoenberg who quipped about waiting for violinists' fourth fingers having to become longer to make his 1936 Violin Concerto sound playable. There was a similar gap between the music and its delivery in Bartók's late Solo Violin Sonata of 1944. The sonata's time has surely come, as the lucidity and technical grasp of James Ehnes's new account make perfectly clear. He pairs it with the often Brahmsian Sonata in E minor, part of which figured in the composer's 1903 graduation concert, when the composer had yet to find his individual voices. There are also violin and piano transcriptions by Tivadar Országh, Joseph Szigeti and Zoltán Székely of folk-inspired piano pieces, the most famous, and deservedly so, being the Romanian Folk Dances arranged by Székely. url.ie/f1f2