Eugène YSAŸE (1858-1931)
Six Sonatas for solo violin, Op.27 (1924)
Alina Ibragimova (violin)
rec. 2014, Concert Hall, Wyastone Estate, Monmouth
HYPERION CDA67993 [67:44]
Ysaÿe’s 1924 sonatas have long been staples on disc. The only sadness for
those of a historical turn of mind is that the dedicatees never recorded the
music which has only really made disc headway from the 1960s onwards. There
have been a number of recommendable traversals of late and Alina
Ibragimova’s disc certainly falls into that category. She is a technically
adroit performer, interpretatively slightly watchful rather than resonant,
but inclined to risk very daring dynamics, and architecturally wholly on top
of the six sonatas.
So whilst she vests the First Sonata with sufficient drama, the dramatic
sense isn’t derived from tensile bowing and resinous attacks; rather it
comes from an introspective quality allied to some playing so quiet – the
sul ponticello episode that ends the Grave, for instance -
that one wonders if she’s playing at all. Inevitably some listeners will
find this overdone. I have to admit that I do, too, but I acknowledge the
consistency of her approach and the profoundly daring interpretative stance
she adopts. In some senses it’s diametrically opposed to Ruggiero Ricci’s
old recording, where super-fast speeds were allied to abrasive bowing and a
scruff-of-the-neck brilliance.
Ibragimova is in many ways no less brilliant, but this quality is often
pointed inwards. She plays Jacques Thibaud’s sonata, No.2 in A minor, with
the right kind of deadpan and dons the mute in its second movement to
deliver a most refined and elegant Sicilienne. Similarly the drone
effects in the third movement are pointed but not over stressed. Like Oscar
Shumsky, she prefers to let No.3 breathe rather more than Ricci, in his
helter-skelter recording. This single-movement Ballade dedicated to Enescu,
incarnates some of the Romanian player’s own expressive devices in its
admixture of Bach and folkloric material – to both of which she responds
well.
Parts of the sonata dedicated to Kreisler always remind me not simply of
Bach but of Schumann’s Second Sonata. Crucially Ibragimova touches on but
doesn’t overplay the baroquisms in this work and the clear allusions to
Kreisler’s own pseudo-baroque Pugnani confection emerge all the more drolly
for being amalgamated into the free-flowing fabric of the music – rather
than being high-lit. Amidst the more famous players Ysaÿe’s student and
second violinist in his quartet, Matthieu Crickboom, tends to be overlooked.
But Crickboom was a fellow Belgian and there’s a strong sense of shared
inheritance – musical, pictorial, narrative – in the Fifth Sonata. The
beautiful dawn evoked is almost painterly and though it is somewhat
anomalous in the context of the set of six it adds a richer and more
allusive depth to this sonata. The dance motifs in the second of the two
movements are played with warmth - though her vibrato is well controlled and
excess fat is trimmed. The final sonata was dedicated to that delicious
player Manuel Quiroga whose few 78rpm records are played with wonderful tone
and style. Something of his brilliant technique and sense of colour is
written into this sonata and Iberian vitality too. Maybe that last quality
is a little lacking in Alina Ibragimova’s performance.
Shumsky’s set (Nimbus) remains a reference one – a player seemingly fully
imbued in the spirit of the sonatas - and Leonidas Kavakos’ recording (BIS)
continues to impress too. Ibragimova’s reading, sympathetically recorded,
stands apart from them, somewhat, in its avoidance of crunchy bowing and its
daring ability to draw the ear in, and is notably valuable for her all-round
instrumental and expressive excellence.
Jonathan Woolf
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