6 Sonatas For Solo Violin Opus 27

Description

The intense, poetic interpretation, with heightened emotions, of the six Sonatas for solo violin, Op. 27, by Eugène Ysaÿe, performed by Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan, who plays here, for the first time on record in this opus, the composer’s own violin, the famous and sublime Guarneri del Gesù "Ysaÿe" from 1740. The figure of the Cantor of Leipzig obsessed the great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931), and the set of six Sonatas for solo violin he composed in July 1923, following legendary concerts where Joseph Szigeti played Bach's Sonatas and Partitas, serves as a tribute and also as a witness in six stages to the evolution of violin techniques since the 18th century. For the performer, they represent another challenge, as new and eloquent as that of the Sonatas and Partitas. Like Bach two centuries earlier, Ysaÿe pushes the instrument to the limits of its capabilities, demanding infallible virtuosity as well as perfectly supple and flexible technique. In approaching these six Sonatas, each dedicated to a great soloist, colleague, and/or friend of Ysaÿe (for example, Szigeti for the 1st, Thibaud for the 2nd, Fritz Kreisler for the 4th, etc.), today’s interpreters can also immerse themselves in the exceptional playing that the composer displayed on his instrument, who further explained that each of these six sonatas "draws its foundation from polyphony. It is, if you will, the technique of the chord, the arpeggio, the double, triple, quadruple string, producing two, three, four, five, and sometimes six simultaneous sounds. All of this is put at the service of a free, fanciful, and, let’s say the word, rhapsodic musical thought." Ysaÿe's Opus 27 is not new to Sergey Khachatryan; he has been familiar with the cycle for a long time in concert. Now thirty-eight years old, an early First Prize winner at the Jean Sibelius International Competition (2000) and the Queen Elisabeth Competition (2005), the Armenian violinist once again asserts his radiant maturity, following his sumptuous and very personal recording of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas (naïve, 2008-2009, V 5181). Sergey Khachatryan delivers here a version with heightened emotions, where what may be playful elsewhere becomes willingly fierce (the Prelude of Sonata No. 2, which reprises the initial motif of Bach's Partita No. 3), simply imitative turns wild and inexorable (Finale of Sonata No. 4). He willingly emphasizes the underlying popular inspiration throughout the entire set, here filled with unprecedented shades and richness. "A violinist, a thinker, a poet, a human being [who has] known hope, love, passion, and despair, [who has lived] the full range of emotions in order to express them all in his playing," this is how Ysaÿe defined a "master of the violin." From the height of his generously sparkling sound, always in the service of a refined expressiveness, Sergey Khachatryan is undoubtedly one. This is the very first recording of Ysaÿe's Sonatas Op. 27 on the composer’s own violin, the famous Guarneri del Gesù "Ysaÿe" from 1740.