Genuin has issued violinist Ilona Then-Bergh and pianist Michael Schäfer’s 
collection of music for violin and piano by the early 20th-century Russian 
composers Grigori Krein and Samuil Feinberg as part of its “UN!ERHÖRT” series. 
Krein’s Violin Sonata, from 1913, falls into two movements, of which the second, 
or fast one, lasts more than twice as long as the first, a sort of introductory 
Andante. Krein’s idiom, ecstatic and mystical - perhaps hyper-romantic - derives, 
according to the notes by Hanspeter Krellmann, from Alexander Scriabin, although 
Krein studied in Leipzig with Max Reger. Then-Bergh produces from her instrument 
a strong but dusky and nuanced tone well suited to express the rhapsodic 
meanderings of Krein’s first movement, with its surges to climactic passages; 
Schäfer possesses the strength for the music’s thunder in the second movement 
(the slashing violin part provides the complementary lightning bursts at such 
moments). Krein’s writing seems to cast the piano in an especially auspicious 
light, while it makes no particularly significant demands on the violin 
technically (tonally it demands a combination of strength and subtlety). The 
roughly nine-minute Poème, written about 1920, offers melismatic voluptuousness 
in both violin and piano parts, a sort of filigree that violinists will 
recognize from Joseph Achron’s enduringly popular Hebrew Melody. The duo adopts 
a manner that conveys the work’s sinuous hypnotic rapture. The Two Pieces on 
Yakutian Themes (“Melody” and “Yakutian Dance”), written in 1945, sound much 
simpler, similar in a way to the most ingratiating ethnic pieces by Belá Bartòk 
(like the Rumanian Dances). Then-Bergh and Schäfer make of them a sort of boffo 
encore.

Samuil Feinberg’s sonata (Krellmann suggests that it comes from about 1960, near 
the end of the composer’s life) consists of five movements, all but one of them 
bearing a title. The first, Praeludio, might suggest a Baroque pastiche, but 
it’s denser and more assertive than many of its earlier counterparts. The 
Scherzo, which includes several surprises that help justify its title, leads the 
instruments on a wild romp-like chase; the plaintive Intermezzo that follows 
bears little or no traces of exotic influences and ends with a brief cadenza for 
the violin, which Then-Bergh plays with typically aggressive command, before the 
fourth movement, which begins without pause. This strong-minded movement, with 
its sudden harmonic shifts, perhaps more than fleetingly suggests Sergei 
Prokofiev’s violin sonatas (the work might have served as a vehicle for David 
Oistrakh). The concluding movement, Epilog, brings the sonata to a tempestuous 
conclusion.

Genuin’s recorded sound, relatively close up (close enough to pick up very 
occasional breathing), creates a clear and clean impression of the authoritative 
vitality of both the music and its performances. Although those wishing to 
investigate the music of these composers should find the release especially 
rewarding, it deserves to be more widely recommended. 

  --Robert Maxham