Elsewhere in this issue you will find a recording of violin sonatas by Schumann, Franck, and Fauré in splendid performances by these same two artists, Raphael Ryger and Madeleine Forte. Together, they make up two-thirds of the Connecticut-based piano trio that bills itself The Lillibridge Ensemble. For these recordings, the group’s cellist, Karen Ryger, wife of violinist Raphael, had time off for good behavior, for these particular programs, presented on various dates ranging between August, 2023, and January, 2026, are sonatas exclusively for a ménage à deux.

The Lillibridge Ensemble was founded in 2018 by Madeleine Forte at the occasion of a Festival at Yale University celebrating her 80th birthday. Started as a trio with Raphael Ryger, violinist, Karen Ryger, cellist, and Madeleine Forte, pianist, it developed into a quintet, with additional performers David Clampitt, second violinist, and Krystyana Czeiner, violist. The ensemble is associated with Romeo Records and performs as duo, trio, and quintet in New York City and Connecticut.

While I can’t say with any certainty that it has never been done before, surely the pairing of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata and Debussy’s end-of-life violin sonata is a highly unusual one. It turns out, however, that the two works cohabit only in the digital domain, for the “Kreutzer” comes from a “live” performance presented on April 24, 2024 in New York City’s Klavierhaus, while the Debussy appears to be a not in-concert recording made in New Haven, Connecticut’s Mulberry Recital Hall in November, 2025.

But whether they were recorded in-concert or not is not particularly relevant here, for the point is that the two sonatas on the present Roméo release were not given on the same program. Thus, there is probably no reason to speculate what they might have in common that brought them together on this recording. That said, there are some points, mostly dissimilarities, that make these two sonatas an interesting odd couple.

All but the last of Beethoven’s violin sonatas (No. 10 in G Major) are early works, composed between 1797 and 1803. The argument could be made that the “Kreutzer” (No. 9), along with the C-Minor Piano Concerto (No. 3)—also completed in 1803—marks the divide between the composer’s early and middle periods.

In contrast, Debussy’s one and only violin sonata, completed in 1917, the year before his death, was part of a projected series of six sonatas for various instruments, only three of which he managed to complete. The one for violin and piano turned out to be his second-to-last work, and it just happens to share, more or less, the same G-Major/Minor tonality as Beethoven’s last violin sonata, a relatively late work (1812) which, it could be argued, marks the transition point between the composer’s middle and late periods.

Moreover, we know that Beethoven composed his final violin sonata with the French violinist Pierre Rode in mind, though he dedicated it to his piano pupil, Archduke Rudolph Johannes Joseph Rainier of Austria. Though Rode (1774–1830) was only 38 in 1812, according to contemporary accounts, he was losing some of his fabled technical skill for which he was justly famous. Besides, as was the French manner of the time, Rode is said to have preferred to play works of a more lyrical and less brilliante style.

And so, Beethoven set aside his vehement, supercharged “Kreutzer” pen of nine years earlier, and produced a beautifully flowing, melodic, and deeply-felt sonata he hoped Rode would take up and play on his visit to Vienna. And play it he did, accompanied by Beethoven’s aforenamed student.

If there be any similarities in tone, tenor, and emotional mood between Debussy’s and Beethoven’s violin sonatas, the comparison would be to Beethoven’s No. 10, not the “Kreutzer,” the fitful, frightful, and demonic drama of which would have frozen Rode in his tracks.

The feral, fevered, and furious musical content of the “Kreutzer” notwithstanding, the backstory of the sonata is not without its Beethovenian drama-queen humor. The work still bears the title of its second dedicatee, another famous French violinist and pedagogue, Rodolph Kreutzer, who apparently was frozen in his tracks when he saw it, and never played it. The work’s original dedication, scribbled in Beethoven’s own hand, was presumably an example of the composer’s barroom humor. In English translation, it reads: “Mulatto Sonata composed for the mulatto Brischdauer, great madman mulatto composer.” Is Beethoven admitting he was a mulatto? It’s a bit like the story of the angel who comes down from Heaven and is hounded by everyone who wants to know what God is like. Finally, exasperated, the angel reveals the secret. “You want to know what God is like? She’s black.”

Brischdauer, by the way, in Beethoven’s broken English, was the violinist George Bridgetower, whom Beethoven held in high esteem. The barroom humor, however, soon turned into an actual barroom brawl, reportedly over some woman that Bridgetower held to be in ill repute, enraging Beethoven who thought highly of her. Ripping up the dedication, he told the violinist that he’d find another player more worthy of being the sonata’s dedicatee. His more worthy choice, without even consulting him, was Kreutzer, considered the finest player of the day. His name stuck to the sonata, though the finest player of the day found the piece thoroughly unlikable and refused to play it.

It didn’t take anyone other than Debussy himself to find his violin sonata unlikable. In a letter to his friend Robert Godet, the composer confessed, “I only wrote this Sonata to be rid of the thing, spurred on as I was by my dear publisher. This sonata will be interesting from a documentary viewpoint and as an example of what may be produced by a sick man in time of war.”

By 1917, when he completed the work, Debussy’s music was no longer the target of the critical brickbats that had been aimed at his earlier works. The critics had moved on to composers and works that could be targeted with even more gleefully devastating results, like Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring of four years earlier. But as I’ve noted in previous reviews, no other composer, with the possible exception of Schoenberg, was more viciously attacked by the critics of his time than Debussy. Today, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t enjoy Debussy’s music, especially his large-scale orchestral canvases, such as La Mer, Nocturnes, and Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, as well as his many colorful and inspired Impressionist pieces for solo piano.

The Violin Sonata has entered the mainstream and is today frequently heard in concert and on record. A description of the piece found on The Listeners’ Club website tells us that “this brief, three-movement work, with all of its steadily-shifting moods, breaks free into a transcendent world of vibrant rhythm, shimmering color and nostalgia. At moments, there are hints of Gypsy fiddling, perhaps influenced by the violinist Béla Radics, whom Debussy heard in a Budapest nightclub. Overall, the Violin Sonata has the atmosphere of a quietly autumnal farewell work,” which, in fact, is exactly what it is.

Ryger and Forte’s playing of the piece is as evocative of its ever-shifting, kaleidoscopic moods and emotional states as can be imagined, weaving for the listener a spellbinding ride on a musical magic carpet.

As for the Beethoven, I have to say that I really like this reading of the “Kreutzer” Sonata. Ryger’s opening chords and double stops are firm, assured, in tune, and clean as a whistle, with no shaking or crunching in bow-to-string contact. When Madeleine Forte enters and the main Allegro commences, there’s a determinedness and solidity to the playing that is febrile, as it should be, but without ever going over the top into territory that rips at the music’s guts and rends it apart, as not a few performances do. Ryger and Forte’s reading is one of power and Olympian dominion, but even the gods have a duty of care, and the players here exercise their power with reasoned control and responsibility. The tempo is not rushed or hectic, and always they find oases of repose. The first-movement exposition repeat is observed.

The second-movement variations are beautifully done. Again, the tempo is not pressed. The players take their time to sing the theme and savor the harmonic design and intricate rhythmic details of its variations. I particularly love the way Ryger and Forte approach Variation II, the one where the violin has nonstop 32nd notes that take the part up to practically the top end of the fingerboard. Ryger has the technique to turn it into a virtuosic thrill-ride if he wants to, and as many violinists do, but instead, at a slightly slower tempo, he and Forte turn it into what feels like a delicate dance—it’s even marked leggiermente—with the piano part holding the two-step, 2/4 rhythm in check. Well done.

One doesn’t often hear the three-part counterpoint in the finale that comes out so vividly in this performance. Yes, three-part, for the piano’s left hand often echoes and imitates the right hand, against the violin’s running triplets. Just imagine, if Beethoven hadn’t torn up his original dedication, we’d know this violin sonata today as the “Bridgetower” Sonata, and if Kreutzer had heard the sonata played by another violinist—maybe he had; I don’t know—perhaps he’d have had second thoughts and decided to give it a go himself. In either case, it’s hard to imagine either Bridgetower, Kreutzer, or anyone else, for that matter, playing the piece any more convincingly and compellingly than Raphael Ryger and Madeleine Forte do in this performance.

I would note that applause at the end of the Beethoven confirms that it was a “live” performance, while silence at the end of the Debussy suggests it was made under studio conditions—i.e., no audience. There is, in fact, a notable difference in the sound of the two recordings, not that one is better than the other, but just that they’re different. The Beethoven was engineered by Mumeneer, a New York City-based audio production entity operating out of Klavierhaus. Mastering for the Debussy in New Haven’s Mulberry Hall was done by Stephen Lucas.

For both works, this digital-only release rates an urgent recommendation.

Jerry Dubins