SAINT-SAËNS / YSAŸE Rare Transcriptions for Violin and Piano - HYPERION HELIOS CDH55353 [AM]: Classical Music Reviews

The art of the arranger was, as this disc reminds us, once an important means of generating virtuoso repertoire and of spreading the word about the music of the day. Two transcribers are celebrated here, both highly accomplished performers and composers in their own right who shared a personal connection that binds this programme together. Camille Saint-Saëns, the extraordinarily long-lived and prolific Frenchman, provides arrangements and original works and is perhaps a more convincing arranger than the other composer featured, the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. Their paths cross with the Caprice d’après l’Étude en forme de valse, the only item here that doesn't fall within the titular remit of the 'rare'.

There are moments of convergence between Saint-Saëns and Ysaÿe throughout the recital, not least their respective transcriptions of piano works by Chopin. Saint-Saëns's arrangements of two Nocturnes feel like genuine partnerships between violin and piano with thematic material generously shared between the two. It helps that the piano is marginally more dominant in the mix than the violin, which here contributes to the impression of integration.

By contrast, Ysaÿe's selections seem a little less suitable than the flowing, singing Nocturnes. Graffin does, however, point out in his booklet notes that his intentions were a little different. Ysaÿe saw these as puzzles of instrumental technique; as a means of extending his own facility for violin writing and, like a number of his own compositions, they were not published during his lifetime, suggesting that the process was more important than the end result. There's an awkwardness to certain moments in Ysaÿe's two Chopin transcriptions which I'm sure is not Graffin's fault. The opening of the E minor Waltz sounds a bit of a handful, as do the more energetic moments of the G minor Ballade. The Ballade, in particular, seems a strange choice characterised by compromise: the nature of the violin-piano duo inevitably lends the whiff of the salon to one of Chopin most blistering and uncompromising assaults on the keyboard. Why, I wonder, did Ysaÿe choose to break up the glorious upward climb of the Ballade's opening with a chord after the first note?

Graffin and Devoyon are excellent throughout – Graffin, particularly, impressing with a sweet tone, excellent intonation and real investment of refined expression. He's particularly fine in the first and last items of the recital. Saint-Saëns’s Caprice brillant, once thought lost, is in fact the progenitor of the finale if the Third Violin Concerto. It embarks on its more familiar course after a rhapsodic Lisztian introduction which, and appropriately enough begins with a spread chord which sounds as though it's escaped from one of Ysaÿe's own miraculous Sonatas for solo violin. And at the other end of the disc, Graffin is joined by harpist Catherine Beynon for the relatively late (1907) Fantaisie for violin and harp. This is a hugely enjoyable work; for me a real discovery marked equally by Fauré-esque musical language and an exotic Spanish flavour.

Hyperion's decision to reissue this album on their budget price Helios label is hugely welcome, and although the title might sound a little specialised, it is an immensely enjoyable disc programmed with thought and care.

Andrew Morris

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