Annemarie Åström & Anna Kuvaja: Spirits of Spring

The new album Spirits of Spring by violinist Annemarie Åström and fortepianist Anna Kuvaja brings together the Nordic musical language and the European musical tradition in a rare interpretation on period instruments. 

Spirits of Spring presents the evolutionary arc of chamber music from the sparse notation of Classicism to the fully written-out expression of the Romantic era. The album opens with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Sonata in G major (K. 379), a work radiating drama, playfulness, and beauty, followed by a virtuosic and fantasia-like sonata in D major (VB 159) by Joseph Martin Kraus, known as the "Swedish Mozart". In both pieces, Anna Kuvaja plays a Michael Walker replica of a 1795 Anton Walter fortepiano, using the era-appropriate Young–Vallotti tuning system (A1 = 430 Hz).  

For the Romantic repertoire, Kuvaja switches to an original, more resonant 1862 Érard fortepiano owned by Nya Paviljongen in Kauniainen, tuned to equal temperament. The duo interprets the lyrical Adagio in E major (H. 72), composed by a 17-year-old Fanny Hensel, as well as their own sensitive arrangements of Felix Mendelssohn's songs Suleika, Frühlingslied, and Scheidend. The album concludes with Danish composer Niels W. Gade's robust and virtuosic Sonata No. 2 in D minor (op. 21), dedicated to Robert Schumann.

FORMAT: CD