‘Janine Jansen & Denis Kozhukhin’

We can hardly imagine our concert halls without the Dutch violinist Janine Jansen. She is back in the 2024-2025 season with an intimate programme: violin sonatas by composers associated with the Schumanns. Robert Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 1 begins “with passionate expression”, followed here by Violin Sonatas No. 2 and 3 by his younger counterpart, Johannes Brahms. Clara Schumann flourished most between these two men, both in her life and her work as a composer. Her Three Romances marked the end of a break in composing that had lasted several years. Yet her appetite for her work would prove short-lived. Her husband Robert attempted suicide a year later and was institutionalised. The memory of the Schumann-Brahms triad lives on in Jansen’s exuberant violin playing.