These performances are not about flashy violin playing or the sparring of an ego-clashing partnership: they are simply fine, considered accounts of three great violin sonatas that seem more impressive with each listen. Augustin Dumay’s opening to the G major Sonata Op 78 is rather slithery, with lots of portamento, but that turns out to be just the way he hears those first phrases, and typical of his willingness to focus every colour and inflection in his repertoire on articulating these works. Those colours are strikingly effective: from the almost viola-like richness with which Dumay invests the main theme of the finale of the A major Sonata Op 100, to the hushed intensity and the silvery half-tone that he brings to the slow movement of the D minor Op 108. And in Louis Lortie he has a partner who is both wonderfully attentive and full of imaginative ideas in his own right; it’s a disc to treasure.
