Violin Sonata No. 1

...in a reading as viscerally bold as Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s, it thrills and intrigues. Across the outer movements both performers pursue Antheil’s truculently provocative mechanistic browbeating with conspiratorial relish and unstoppable élan.

Fuelled by a trip to Tunis, the two inner movements are imbued with ‘all the strangeness of Africa’ according to Antheil, and Kopatchinskaja is in thrall to their mercurial fantasy.

…it blends traditional form with a thoroughly modern sound that, in this reading, bustles at a breakneck pace with percussive and metallic timbres.