Sonatas for piano and violin Nos. 4 & 7

Beethoven’s violin.
At the turn of the 19th century, Prince Lichnowsky made Beethoven a handsome gift: a set of four string quartet instruments, which the 30-year-old composer immediately marked with his seal and a large carved ‘B’. One of them was a violin made in Salzburg around 1700. Rediscovered and authenticated in 1995 by the experts of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, this unexpected legacy is here presented for the first time in a wholly appropriate recording project: Sonatas nos.4 and 7, the very embodiment of Beethovenian élan terrible, are performed by two outstanding artists!

Andreas Staier plays a Graf fortepiano, 1824. Daniel Sepec plays a violin from Salzburg, c.1700, later owned by Beethoven.