Classik Reviews

Atlanta Audio Society
September, 2003

Making Beautiful Music Together
Intermezzo The Joiner Duo Anna Barbrey Joiner Viola Thomas Joiner Violin ACA Digital CM20061

Intermezzo, with the husband-wife duo of Thomas Joiner, violin, and Anna Barbrey Joiner, viola, present one of the most charming chamber music recitals I've heard in recent years. Together with outstanding contribution by pianist Martha Thomas in the Bruch, Fuchs, and Brahms pieces, they explore a much-neglected repertoire. The best-known works here are easily the three Fantasy Pieces, Op. 83, Nos. 6, 1, and 4 by Max Bruch and the transcription and adaptation of Brahms' sublimely beautiful Intermezzo in A Major, Op. 118, No. 2. But the other four composers on this CD, though not household names today, all played a part in the development of music.

Antoine-Barthelemy Bruni (1757-1821), for example, wrote some sixty string quartets and a method book for viola. Robert Fuchs (1847-1927) was well thought-of by Brahms as a composer, though he is best remembered as the teacher of Wolf, Schmidt, Zemlinsky, Mahler, and Sibelius. Andreas Lidel (1740-1789) was famed as a virtuoso on the viola da gamba and baryton. And Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda (1801-1866) was well regarded as a violinist, conductor and composer whose Symphony No. 1 and Violin Concerto were once in the standard repertoire. It says something of them all that the works represented are not out of place in the same fast company as Bruch and Brahms. The performers play all these duos and trios with idiomatic awareness, style, and warm, glowing feeling. Recommended for those who want to explore the world of chamber music beyond the majors.

Phil Muse

Atlanta Audio Society web site: www.mindspring.com/~chucksaudio