Some background to this recording:
A few thoughts from me:
I am no expert regarding these Six Sonatas (dedicated respectively to Szigeti, Thibaud, Enescu, Kreisler, Crickboom and Quiroga), and indeed have found them emotionally barren over the years irrespective of the performer, although I have never doubted the composer’s musical intellect or his mastery of writing for his own instrument. However, with her formidable technique and her enquiring mind, Hilary Hahn offers (me) a series of revelations based on marvellous playing, what seem meaningful insights, and an overall passionate response that makes for an engagement I have not experienced before with these Bach-inspired yet modern scores (the opening of Sonata 5 might pass for Bartók), excepting the single-movement Sonata 3 (‘Ballade’), a great piece of growth and energy. There are many recordings of Ysaÿe’s Opus 27 and I have heard relatively few, so I’m not going to be idle or flippant and throw superlatives at Hahn’s interpretations, suffice to say I was totally hooked by each of the fifteen movements and am grateful to Hilary Hahn for illuminating hitherto unsuspected riches. DG 486 4176.
Hilary Hahn is a fine violinist, and I have respected her even more since she refused to be pushed into a ‘wet T-shirt’ format.
Incidentally, probably not generally known, but it is just – JUST – possible that John was descended from Ysaye, as his mother, Elisabeth Herlitzius before she married, might just – JUST have been a by-blow of Ysaye’s. No real evidence, and Elisabeth was more than a bit a fantasist, but her mother was separated from her father for many years, by his working in England, and then being interned during WW1, and her mother moved very much in musical circles. She was also good-looking. A close relative (by the name of Gottschalk, but no relative as far as known to the composer) had a big music store in Mulheim in the Ruhr.
I have heard Sonata No.3 used as an encore , most recently following a terrible performance of Shostakovich 1 by Julian Rachlin but whose spirit seemed to reappear in the Ysaye. It grows on you Col.