Brahms/ Kautsky - Three Sonatas for Violin & Piano

On this new release, the three Brahms Sonatas for Violin and Piano are brilliantly performed by Len-Lie Gu and Katherine Kautsky. Wen-Lei Gu, Associate Professor of Music at Lawrence University Conservatory of Music in Appleton, Wisconsin, has won international acclaim as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. Born into a musical family, she won first prizes in both violin and piano state competitions at age seven, and was the gold medalist in China's Fourth National Violin Competition at age twelve. At age thirteen, she was the silver medalist in the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition in England. Subsequently, she made her international debut the same year, performing the Saint-Saëns Violin Concerto in B minor in England with Yehudi Menuhin at the baton. Menuhin said of her playing: "sounds like a poem, looks like a painting." Catherine Kautsky, Chair of Keyboard at Lawrence University, has been lauded by the New York Times as "a pianist who can play Mozart and Schubert as though their sentiments and habits of speech coincided exactly with hers... The music spoke directly to the listener, with neither obfuscation nor pretense." She was the 2016 winner of the Lawrence Excellence in Teaching Award, the 2013 winner of the university's Faculty Convocation Award, and in 2017 she was honored with the George and Marjorie Olsen Chandler Chair in Music.