Recording of the Week, Ysaÿe's six sonatas for solo violin from Hilary Hahn

Amid the celebrations of composers’ anniversaries this year – Lalo, Ligeti, Byrd, Weelkes – naturally some major individual works also have their ‘birthdays’ in 2023. July sees the 100th anniversary of the composition of Eugène Ysaÿe’s six fiendish sonatas for solo violin – not composed in quite such a white-hot blaze of inspiration as legend would have it, but certainly in a fairly short time-span and in a flurry of artistic intensity.

Dedicated not to illustrious predecessors but to six virtuoso violinists from the younger generation, they are a gift from the ‘King of the Violin’ to posterity. And who better than Hilary Hahn to mark the occasion? Her thoughtful new recording of these works by her own ‘grand-teacher’ (via Jascha Brodsky) clearly shows the influence and legacy of Ysaÿe’s artistry. She takes her role as heir to the throne seriously; Ysaÿe lived recently enough that some of his own recordings survive, and she describes having studied these in the process of immersing herself in the sonatas.

Eugène Ysaÿe performs Vieuxtemps’s Rondino in this recording made in 1912 (pianist unknown)

Ysaÿe’s initial inspiration was seemingly a concert given by Joseph Szigeti featuring Bach’s solo sonata in G minor, and the spirit of Bach is perceptible in both the first two sonatas. The first echoes not just its key but its use of expansive four-note spread chords, as well as incorporating a fugue into the second movement that stretches the violin’s capacity for polyphony to its limit – chords of five and even six notes. To me this seems as physically unplayable as the twelve-fingered piano arrangement from the futuristic film Gattaca; yet Hahn not only manages to work magic but does so without drawing attention to it.

The second sonata’s connection to Bach is more direct, with the quotation from his E major partita that opens it; more ominous, though, is the ever-looming shadow of the Dies irae plainchant motif, present throughout the sonata. Even in the more relaxed moments, such as the delicate sarabande subtitled Danse des Ombres, it lurks as a kind of memento mori, and there’s a sense in the aptly-titled Les Furies that ends the sonata of both Ysaÿe and Hahn venting a kind of frustration at the inescapability of this obsessive motif. Her bowing in this movement is some of the most aggressive on the album, and somehow even the silent pauses between the dramatic outbursts are charged with tension.

Hilary Hahn performs Les Furies from Ysaÿe’s Sonata No.2 in A minor for solo violin

Sunrises have inspired composers for centuries – Haydn, Nielsen, Richard Strauss, Debussy – but Ysaÿe’s evocation of L’Aurore at the start of the fifth sonata is absolutely up there with the best of them. Hahn captures the sense of pre-dawn stillness without becoming over-indulgent (the interrupting pizzicato motifs, perhaps hinting at the first few awakening birds, are a refreshing spot of colour), and the triumphant conclusion of the movement in a brilliant halo of G major arpeggios is simply exhilarating.

I freely admit to displaying favouritism among these sonatas – No.5 might seem lightweight, comprising just two movements adding up to about nine minutes, and lacking the academic gravitas of No.1 or the dance-suite pedigree of No.4, but the diptych of a glorious dawn and an ensuing danse rustique (with a particularly brilliant concluding flourish) is just programmatic enough to get the visual imagination going, and these two movements are the two that I’ve kept coming back to.

Hilary Hahn performs L’Aurore from Ysaÿe’s Sonata No.5 in G major for solo violin

That being said, the single-movement sixth sonata, in a sparkling E major, gives No.5 a run for its money – here, more than anywhere else, Hahn conveys a real sense of simple unadulterated joy and pleasure. The set certainly isn’t intended to have any kind of overarching narrative, but No.6 emphatically dispels any lingering shadows from No.2, and rounds the album off with a real holiday feeling. Notwithstanding the terrifying double-stopped octaves in the closing bars, she gallops home with such audible panache that I found myself expecting a roar of applause to overtake the final note.

We are not short of stellar violinists today, but even among such a crowded field Hahn’s Ysaÿe truly stands out. I can only chalk it up to the direct transmission of his legacy and musical approach to her, and her enthusiasm and commitment in embracing that style.