On this double SACD, “Paths into Impressionism” are taken: starting with the two important Sonatas for Violin and Piano by Fauré, the first of which was already described as a masterpiece by Saint-Saëns, and four other short pieces by Fauré, the great Salzburg violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger and the German pianist Michael Korstick, who is already very familiar with the French idiom through many of his own recordings, present further works from the French and Belgian repertoire in their usual masterly and spirited interpretations: the Sonata by the early deceased Guillaume Lekeu, which was commissioned and premiered by Eugène Ysaÿe, and Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano (with a Blues as the middle movement), which is characterized by Ravel’s view that violin and piano were fundamentally incompatible. The resulting manifold parallel developments and bitonal frictions create specific stimuli, though without showing even the slightest hint of the music falling apart.