"With some delay, the Brüggen-Plank duo enriches the Beethoven Year with a component that focuses on the surroundings. Rudolph Johann Joseph Rainer of Austria, also Archduke of Austria, is known today primarily as composer and Beethoven’s patron. Beethoven dedicated two handfuls of his great works to him, including the Violin Sonata, which is also heard. As a composer, Archduke Rudolph of Austria left only a few works in varied instrumentations. Jan Hugo Vorisek and Beethoven probably met only once. After studying piano with Hummel, Vorisek was active in many ways in the bourgeois salons of Vienna. While the violin sonatas of the two contemporaries each represent the only contributions to the genre, Beethoven composed ten. The two musicians of the Brüggen-Plank duo, who have already presented an album focusing on Szymanowski, continue their journey with feminine elegance and sensitivity, without neglecting the powerful access. After a uniquely conceived interplay, a duo was formed which, with rich experience in historical performance practice, for example with Reinhard Goebel, now profitably incorporates this knowledge into the interpretation of this recording as well. Thanks to their passionate devotion to and understanding of the music, their interpretations, with their sensitively coordinated interplay, are worth listening to. Even if it is clear that the Beethoven sonata is ahead of the other two, the two musicians nevertheless succeed convincingly in presenting the framing works in such a way that they are pleasing as compositions not only in terms of their craftsmanship but also in their musical appearance, so that the entire recording becomes a listening pleasure that expands the acoustic horizon with rarely heard works."
