If ever two musicians seemed to be in their own separate worlds when playing together, it’s the violinist Leonidas Kavakos and pianist Yuja Wang. And yet the level of shared detail and purpose in this recital – a generous programme of three meaty sonatas and three encores – was proof of the ongoing strength of the longstanding occasional partnership between these star soloists.
Much of the music’s sense of propulsion came from Wang, though she rarely signposted it. In Brahms’s Sonata No 1 it was Kavakos who was in the foreground, playing with irresistible warmth and with his trademark clean articulation of each note even within a single bow stroke. But behind him, Wang’s deceptively unassuming, almost out-of-focus playing worked with those melodies to capture this music’s quality of elusiveness, if such a thing can be done.
