Stanzeleit delights with Delius

Violinist Susanne Stanzeleit powerfully engages with the best of Delius' chamber music including the sweeping Sonata of 1892

Composer:  Delius
Repertoire: Violin Sonatas
Artists: Susanne Stanzeleit (violin), Gusztáv Fenyõ (piano)
Rating:  4/5
Genre: Chamber
Label: Naxos 8.572261

The orchestra, with or without voices, was Delius’s prime territory. Even so, the best of his chamber music, like these Violin Sonatas, rises well above the limitations of his chunky piano writing: he was far more skilled as a violinist, and it shows. Susanne Stanzeleit engages powerfully and beautifully with the music’s ongoing melodising and finds much light and shade in the Third Sonata – composed with Eric Fenby’s assistance in Delius’s paralysed old age and surely the finest of the numbered set of three. Also included is the ‘pre-First’ Sonata of 1892, a large-scale, sweepingly impressive piece of lyrical Romanticism.