Their second duo album on Signum Classics, Viktoria Mullova and Alasdair Beatson perform Beethoven’s Sonatas 6, 1 and 8. Just as in previous recordings, they use a copy of an 1805 Walter (a Viennese fortepiano) by Paul McNulty; together with violin strung with gut, these instruments are what Beethoven’s music craves, giving a rich texture and distinct colours between the registers.

Atmospherically filmed amid the Raphael Cartoons in the V&A’s Raphael Court, this album is a treat for both ear and eye. British conductor Oliver Zeffman leads the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in a programme that wanders through time, perfectly complementing the glorious surroundings. Russian-born British violinist Viktoria Mullova joins the ASMF for Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major in a performance that’s crisp, songful and wonderfully eloquent, and her Bach solos speak powerfully in such a striking setting. Zeffman conducts Honegger’s “Pastorale d’été” with a lovely sense of atmosphere, while Arvo Pärt’s timeless “Fratres” makes a huge impact with its stillness and deceptive simplicity.

Viktoria Mullova and John Eliot Gardiner: Mullova, a strong-toned, intense, and very virtuosic Russian violinist living in the West, an individualist without a trace of idiosyncrasy and a expressivist without a trace of sentimentality, and Gardiner, a superb proponent of period instruments who's out of his depths with passionate expressivity, an excellent exponent of Handel and Bach who's over his head with Beethoven or Berlioz, a conducting collection of idiosyncrasies passing himself off as an interpreter and an amateur passing himself off as an individualist.

Viktoria Mullova’s first album of Beethoven Violin Sonatas, Nos 3 & 9’Kreutzer’ with Kristian Bezuidenhout, was reviewed enthusiastically by Gramophone magazine. ‘ The sound, in these familiar pieces has a startling clarity’; it went on to say that the period instruments ‘relocate these two works in a darkly Romantic sound world’. For the next volume in a complete cycle, Viktoria is partnered by Alasdair Beatson in the strange and gnomic 4th sonata, the popular 5th ‘Spring’ sonata and the dramatic 7th – Beethoven in C Minor mood – always exciting and turbulent!