Alina Ibragimova (violin), Cédric Tiberghien (piano) Hyperion CDA68720 ***

It's an interesting idea to pair Ravel's music for violin and piano with the songful, Franckian Violin Sonata in G by Belgian composer Guillaume Lekeu, who died in 1894 at the age of 24. Lekeu was 22 when he wrote the sonata, the same age that Ravel was when he wrote a violin sonata movement in 1897, by which time the music of the two composers was already worlds apart. The blues-influenced core of Ravel's Violin Sonata in G, the almost post-modernist approach to gypsy music in Tzigane,and the austere beauty of the Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré, all written in the 1920s, are another world away again. It's actually the tribute to Fauré that finds Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien at their best. Their playing just doesn't penetrate as deeply in the other works. See url.ie/4qdb