Alina Ibragimova reviews

This revelatory series from Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien benefits from offsetting works of Mozart’s middle-period and maturity with some of his earliest compositions. One of the joys of this set, expertly played and annotated (by Misha Donat), is the way these outstanding artists subtly shade the two early sonatas of 1764, fully endorsing Mozart’s original instruction that they ‘can be played with the accompaniment of a violin or transverse flute’.

From the austere opening bars of the First Violin Sonata, one of Prokofiev’s towering masterpieces, it’s clear that this violin-and-piano duo is capable of the subtlest interplay. Steven Osborne is the lion, or the demon, that needs taming by Alina Ibragimova’s fiddler, dancing – sometimes ever so frailly – on the volcano.