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Eugene YSAŸE (1858-1931)
Six Sonatas for Solo Violin, Op.27 (1924)
Sonata No.1 in G minor (Joseph Szigeti) [18:49]
Sonata No.2 in A minor (Jacques Thibaud) [14:52]
Sonata No. 3 in D Minor (George Enescu) [8:19]
Sonata No. 4 in E Minor (Fritz Kreisler) [12:23]
Sonata No. 5 in G major (Mathieu Crickboom) [12:03]
Sonata No. 6 bis ‘Unfinished’ (Manuel Quiroga) [15:17]*
Sonata No. 6 in E major (Manuel Quiroga) [9:02]
Niklas Walentin (violin)
rec. April & November 2019, Driever, Germany.
*World Premiere Recording
NAXOS 8.574214-5 [42:18 + 43:45]

Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas for Solo Violin, Op. 27 have, it seems to me, too often been regarded primarily as a test of a violinist’s technique, almost as display pieces, so that the audience’s primary reaction will relate to a performer’s technical skills rather than the quality of Ysaÿe’s music. The composer himself was certainly conscious of the distinction between ‘music’ and ‘virtuosity’, something which is implicit in his reported comment on his own development as a composer, when he said that his Poème Élegiaque, Op. 12 marked “a definite step in my work as a composer for it contains clear evidence of my desire to link music and virtuosity” (A. Ysaÿe and B. Ratcliff, Ysaÿe, His Life, Work, and Influence, London, 1947, p.218.) Writing music in response to Bach’s compositions for solo violin, if it is to mean anything, surely demands that there be musical substance, not just technical fireworks – and Ysaÿe’s six sonatas fulfil that demand.

To take one of the sonatas (No.2) as an example; dedicated to Jacques Thibaud, this sonata’s four movements carry the following titles – Obsession: Prelude / Malinconia / Danse des Ombres: Sarabande / Les furies. A word like obsession and the allusion to the furies (the Roman name for the Greek Eumenides, avenging goddesses, the fearful daughters of Night, with serpents entwined in their hair, they punished those who perpetrated certain crimes – such as murder) suggest both a dark and troubled mental state, ideas reinforced with references to a ‘dance of shadows’ and melancholy in the other two titles. These do not, of course, contain any kind of reference to the composer’s good friend Jacques Thibaud (unless any such reference is deeply ironic, since Thibaud was famous for his sweetness of tone, while Ysaÿe marks the second movement brutalement, as if challenging Thibaud to play in the very manner that came least naturally to him); but, rather, to an area of inner and outer life with which the music is concerned. Another clear theme is ‘judgement’ – the Furies are judges of a kind, after all. This presence of this theme is reinforced by the clear quotations of/allusionmust s to the Dies Irae in each of the last three movements. Though there are, indeed, some technically demanding passages in this sonata, it is unmistakably a work in which, as Ysaÿe said of his Poème Élegiaque, there is a powerful link between “music and virtuosity”. The virtuosity here demanded of the player must be in the service of such themes as sorrow, death and judgement.


The particular quality of this sonata, in a really good performance, is that these intimations of death and the day of judgement exist alongside (perhaps one should say within) what Michael Stockhem identifies (Eugène Ysaÿe, Sechs Sonaten für Violine Solo, Op.27, Munich, 2006, ‘Preface’) as the sonata’s “tender lyricism”. I hear this interplay of light and dark, of anxiety and tenderness in, for example, Tai Murray’s recording (Harmonia Mundi HMU 907569) of this sonata or – to take another example, in that by Benjamin Schmid (review). In this new recording by the Danish/Swiss violinist Niklas Walentin there is less sense of that emotional doubleness which, for me, gives the sonata its particular power.

Walentin’s tempi are generally on the slow side. Sometimes this works well, as in the first movement (‘L’aurore’) of Sonata 5, which has an attractively evocative poetry. Elsewhere, however, it creates problems, as in Sonata 3 where the slow tempo (here are some comparative timings: Walentin 8:19, Schmid 7:05, Murray 7:34, Karl Stobbe 7:16, Shumsky 6:56, David Oistrakh 6:28) robs the music of any real sense of the energy and wildness of central European folksong and of that momentum of pseudo-improvisation that the best performances have.

Of the six sonatas here, I took most pleasure from Walentin’s performance of the E minor sonata (No.4, the one dedicated to Kreisler) – it is perhaps significant that his tempi here are not so slow (compared to other artists) as they are elsewhere. In the opening Allemande the transition from quadruple time (characteristic of Bach’s allemandes) to triple time is handled with considerable adroitness and the motif of four ascending notes – E, F sharp, G, A – is presented clearly but without excessive emphasis. Walentin captures the nobility of this Allemande. The pizzicato opening of the Sarabande is elegantly lucid, with the motif now inverted. The same four notes permeate the movement (perhaps with a nod to that ‘Allegro’ by Kreisler which he attributed to Pugnani). In the finale Walentin is at his most impressive, the bravura figurations played both with a seeming ease and with a respect for their baroque origins. Niklas Walentin seems to find high-class imitation Baroque as congenial as the dedicatee of this sonata did.

This 2-CD set has one ‘Unique Selling Point’, as the modern marketing jargon has it – it contains a performance of a discovery made in 2017, that of a further unfinished sonata for solo violin (in a set of Ysaye’s notes, the Lavergne manuscript). This is the first recording of the three movements of this sonata (dedicated, like No.6, to Manuel Quiroga). Its first movement (Allegro molto moderato con brio) sounds rather halting, at least in this performance, but is certainly harmonically striking. The second movement (Canzona) is pleasantly lyrical, but I wonder (I haven’t, of course, seen a score) if it might not be more so were it to have a greater sense of forward momentum. The brief Finale (here just 1:41 long) is not, on this evidence, a piece of the highest standards of which Ysaÿe was capable. Though the discovery of this abandoned piece is certainly good news, it surely doesn’t do anything much to change what is of most interest in Ysaÿe’s Opus 27. I, at least, wouldn’t swap it for the one-movement sonata which Ysaÿe dedicated to Manuel Quiroga in the set published in 1924, which is more attractive and convincing, in part because of its much stronger ‘Spanish’ quality. It will be interesting to see how many violinists choose to include the ‘unfinished’ 3-movement Sonata for Manuel Quiroga in their recordings of Ysaÿe’s Sonatas for Solo Violin.

Though I certainly wouldn’t say that this is a ‘bad’ recording of Ysaÿe’s Opus 27 sonatas, I wouldn’t put in my top band of recordings of these six works – a band in which I include (in alphabetical order) Philippe Graffin, Alina Ibragimova, Ilya Kaler, Tai Murray, Ruggiero Ricci, Benjamin Schmid, Oscar Shumsky and Thomas Zehetmair (there are several other recordings by reputable musicians which I haven’t heard). I can’t recommend this new set as the one to buy if you don’t have a copy of Ysaÿe’s Opus 27. But if you already have that work in a recording you are happy with, you might like to explore Niklas Walentin’s recording (even though I find it somewhat uneven), not least because of the presence of the rediscovered work in a first recording.

I feel the necessity to discuss one matter concerning this set, which isn’t directly musical. Over the years the vast majority of Naxos discs have come with a booklet which included an essay of some length on the composer and on the specific music on the disc. These have often been of a kind especially suitable for those at a relatively early stage of their exploration of classical music – I suspect that such people still account for a fair percentage of Naxos’s customers. This release makes a substantial departure from such an approach. The booklet opens with a Foreword by Niklas Walentin occupying half a page in English (and the same in Danish). Walentin talks of his love of these works and ends by saying that he sees in the writing and dedicating of these sonatas “a strong human value, which I have always wanted to be – a real Gentleman!”. Can this really be said to help the reader, neophyte or otherwise? There follows (again in Danish and English) a short paragraph on Ysaÿe and then a biography of Walentin some 4 to 5 times longer than that of Ysaÿe. Next comes a double-page spread of three photographs of Niklas Walentin. Most of the rest of the booklet is taken up by Michael Bo’s report of a conversation with Walentin in a Copenhagen cocktail-bar. Bo reports Walentin as saying that “this CD is [his] attempt to forget himself and push Ysaÿe all the way to the front ranks”, an aspect of Walentin’s belief that the “only way to do this music justice was to eradicate himself, delete his ego as a performer”. Walentin is also quoted as saying “the artist here is Eugène Ysaÿe. Niklas Walentin has almost ceased to exist … The notes in themselves, that is the art”.

“I aim to be the waiter without any influence whatsoever on the main course of the dinner which is to be served” says Walentin, as quoted by Michael Bo. All of this is, of course, full of mixed messages. A performer who claims to have ‘deleted’ his ego occupies far more space than the man who is, in his own words “the artist here”. Witty as Walentin’s metaphor of the performer as waiter is, it really doesn’t make sense. Agreed, we don’t want or expect the waiter to cook our dinner, merely to bring it to the table. But no worthwhile music, surely, can be adequately played by any musician who abdicates from having any interpretative responsibility? “The notes themselves” can never be played pure and simple, without conscious decisions made by the performer. To imagine that violinists (in this case) can be mere automata is to turn them into the equivalent of player pianos.

The material I have just discussed irritated me, as you may have guessed. The final section of the booklet made me laugh. It is headed Music and Attire and in it Walentin solemnly declares “Clothes, couture is [sic] a very important issue with Ysaÿe … As I was about to do the recording I got in touch with famous German tailor, Maximilian Mogg. He managed to conjure up the exact right atmosphere. I ordered a new dinner jacket to perform in. Maximilian is young, but inspired by the 20s, with some current shebang blended into the mix!”.

My irritation – or, indeed, my laughter – don’t matter. More important though, is the consideration that presentation as self-indulgent and silly as much in this booklet is (something which does a disservice to Walentin’s obvious talents as a violinist) is likely to put off, rather than encourage newcomers to music such as this.

Glyn Pursglove