💥💿 CD RECORDING REVIEW! 💿💥
On The Strad the renowned and prestigious strings magazine, March 2025 issue
“FRANCESCA BONAITA: SZYMANOWSKI
A YOUNG VIOLINIST OFFERS MUCH TO SEDUCE THE EAR”

“Szymanowski’s three Mythes may be the most performed of his violin-and-piano works – most of which appear here – but this disc also traces the intriguing path towards them. The earliest piece, the Violin Sonata, was written while the composer was still studying in Warsaw and, while it remains rooted in the grand Romantic tradition, it is bold in both its rhetoric and its soaring lyricism. These qualities are realised by Francesca Bonaita, whose winning sound is especially impressive in the first movement’s fiery passion.
In the second she spins out a natural lyrical thread over a tonal core of tender sweetness.
The more enigmatic (and headily chromatic) Romance, from 1910, takes us further along the path to Szymanowski’s later sensuality and mysticism. Bonaita here responds well to its more supple lines yet she’s also fearless in the ascending octaves leading to its climax.
More perfumed and Impressionistic are the Mythes. In the first, ‘La fontaine d’Aréthuse’, Bonaita sings siren-like over the piano’s watery roulades, delicately handled by Saskia Giorgini, an ideal partner throughout the disc. ‘Narcisse’ is especially ravishing, bathed in half-lights, and ‘Dryades et Pan’ is both capricious and enigmatic.
Szymanowski’s elaborations of three Paganini Caprices are a welcome confection to end, showing, among much else, Bonaita’s ability to hover apparently indefinitely in the instrument’s uppermost reaches.”