Bartók: Sonata for Solo Violin, BB 124, Sz. 117 - CD

James Ehnes has previously explored Béla Bartók’s concertos for violin and for viola, to great acclaim. This disc is the second in his equally successful survey of Bartók’s chamber music for the violin. His accompanist, once more, is Andrew Armstrong, a pianist praised by critics for his passionate expression and dazzling technique.

The folk-inspired Sonata for Solo Violin was the last work that Bartók wrote for the instrument, not to mention the most challenging. In a departure from his usual practice, this work was written not for a fellow Hungarian, but rather for an artist born in New York where Bartók was now living: Yehudi Menuhin. Suitably impressed by a recital performance by Menuhin of his first Violin Sonata as well as Bach’s Sonata in C, he had no hesitation in accepting the violinist’s commission for a sonata that, like Bach’s, would be unaccompanied.

Almost half a century earlier, Bartók had written his Sonata for Violin and Piano in E minor. It was included in a concert given by graduating students of the Liszt Academy in June 1903, when a critic, most likely not realising just how right he would prove, hailed Bartók as ‘a phenomenal young genius, whose name today is known only to a few, but who is destined to play a great and brilliant role in the history of Hungarian music’.

Additionally on this disc we have three groups of Bartók’s Romanian and Hungarian folk dances, folksongs, and folk tunes, arranged for violin variously by Zoltán Székely, Tivadar Országh, and Joseph Szigeti, often with direct involvement by the composer himself who helped fine-tune the new arrangements. James Ehnes also highlights the Romanian influences in Bartók’s Sonatina for piano, transcribed for violin by André Gertler, a student of Bartók’s.

One of the leading young soloists to emerge from Scandinavia in recent years, noted particularly for her superb musical expression, as well as her well-developed virtuosity and musicality.

Young Norwegian violinist, Vilde Frang brings together a diverse, yet complimentary selection of sonatas for her second EMI Classics release. The recording is available on CD and digital download from 7° March, 2011.

The youthful, spirited Grieg: Violin Sonata No.1 in F Major, Op. 8 and Richard Strauss: Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 18 are paired with Bartók’s technically challenging, musically complex Sonata for Solo Violin, BB 124, Sz. 117. Frang frequently performs the later, which Bartók composed as an homage to Bach, with the Strauss in concert. Vilde is joined by pianist Michail Lifits for this recording

Vilde’s debut recording, Sibelius and Prokofiev: Violin Concertos at 22, received wide-spread critical acclaim. The Financial Times wrote “rarely has this music sounded so tender, so intimate or so lyrical” while Independent Record Review called her “prodigiously gifted”. Vilde has been compared to a young Anne-Sophie Mutter, her mentor, with whom she often performs.

“Frang is clearly a new star in the violin firmament” The Guardian

Hidden Acoustics is Ruth Palmer’s ground-breaking solo tour, where music reveals startling acoustics, hidden in architecture that comes to life in programmes centred on Bach.

Ruth says, “Bach’s solo violin music has its own hidden acoustics in its counterpoint, and I have found that solo violin allows me the purest link to the space and acoustic of the building in which I am playing. To me, when the piece of music and the building match in spirit, something magical happens.”

In the words of Daniel Libeskind, “That raw communication between the building and the person, the child so to speak, standing in front of it and being in it, that is really the discourse; it’s an experience that you have with your body, with your mind, with your soul.”

One of the most dynamic performers of our time, violinist Ruth Palmer, has garnered international recognition, including a Classical BRIT award for her recording of Shostakovich with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Recent performances include appearances with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Ulster, English Chamber, and London Chamber orchestras with conductors including Andre de Ridder, Vasily Petrenko, and Carlo Rizzi. She has recorded for EMI, Quartz, and AVIE, and appears regularly on BBC Radio3, BBC Radio 4, Classic FM radio and Classic FM TV.

Ruth plays the Yfrah Neaman Stradivari kindly loaned to her by his family.

“Ruth Palmer’s compelling performances in the empty Octagon Building were an instant sell-out; an unforgettable combination of venue and performer.” James Runcie, Artistic Director, Bath Literature Festival

Ruggiero Ricci has enjoyed a variegated and colourful discography on Decca and these recordings, are, apart from Prokofiev’s Second Violin Sonata, all comprised of music for solo violin. The Bach pieces date from 1957 London sessions and the 20th-century pieces were recorded three years later at Victoria Hall in Geneva. Tully Potter’s perceptive liner notes include material from an interview with the violinist, who offers interesting perspective on recording venues and corrects an error in the Decca discographical information about the recording of the Prokofiev Second Violin Sonata with Bussotti, which was recorded at his home in New Jersey. It makes its first release on CD, while several of the solo works are released internationally on CD for the first time.

[Prokofiev] “Ricci’s intonation is faultless throughout (which is more than can be said of many fiddlers), his tone is sweet and warm, and his technique carries him without a qualm over the most taxing difficulties… [His] elegance stands him in good stead in the Prokofiev, where his partner at the piano also distinguishes himself by some most artistic leggiero playing. The toy-like Scherzo could scarcely be bettered by any other violin-and-piano team.” Gramophone

EMI Classics is pleased to announce the release of a joint recital by the legendary pianist Martha Argerich and Gidon Kremer, one of today’s most original and compelling violinists. The concert was recorded live at Berlin’s Philharmonie in December 2006. The repertoire features Schumann’s Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2 in D minor and Kinderszenen, as well as Bartók’s Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 and Sonata for Solo Violin. Two encores, Fritz Kreisler’s Liebesleid and Schön Rosmarin round out the release.

“A summit of two musical giants,” wrote the Abendzeitung München, reviewing the concert. “They are chamber music’s dream couple […] The way they communicate musically cannot be surpassed by any other current duo” said the Münchner Merkur. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung summed up the concert with the words “chamber music is alive.”

Interviewed in the film, Gidon Kremer muses about his decades-long partnership with Martha Argerich: “The paradox is that, even though we are not a couple in love, we speak an intimate language through our music of the kind that is usually only spoken between couples in love. It is even possible that, through our music, we can become even more closely entwined than a couple in love can be.”

At first sight, Robert Schumann and Béla Bartók might not appear to have much in common. Schumann represented the German romantic tradition and favoured rich, full harmonies, while Bartók sought to escape from that sound world, his music tending toward “extremes of delicacy or sparseness, or of complexity or roughness, as his vision dictates.” Yet the two composers do have much in common: both were pianist-composers in whose output their own instrument retains a central place yet both had the ambition to reach out and embrace every musical genre; both Schumann and Bartok maintained a strong interest in music education and both promoted the status of music in the wider cultural sphere.

Schumann’s second sonata, in D minor Op. 121, composed in 1851, was dedicated to Ferdinand David, the dedicatee of Mendelssohn’s E-minor Violin Concerto. After Schumann’s death, the sonata was often performed by Joseph Joachim with the composer’s wife, Clara, at the piano. Kinderszenen dates from 1838, a period in which Schumann concentrated on music for solo piano. Kremer comments, “I love listening to Martha from backstage. I love the way she masterfully recreates the fragility of Schumann’s Kinderszenen. It is simply a heart-stopping experience.”

Bartók completed the first of his two violin and piano sonatas in December 1921 and the second the following year. He dedicated both to Jelly d’Arányi, a brilliant young violinist whose playing thrilled him and with whom he fell in love. In both sonatas Bartók treats the two instruments as independent but complementary – they do not share material, as the violin and piano would do in classical duo sonatas. In November of 1943, Bartók met Yehudi Menuhin when he came to play the First Sonata for him, prior to a performance. This meeting inspired the composer’s Sonata for Solo Violin, which Menuhin premiered at Carnegie Hall the following year. Although its structure is traditional and it recalls the first Bach solo sonata, having a fugue as a second movement and a fast triple-time finale, its constant rhythmic inventiveness gives the work a sense of improvisatory freedom.

Hungaroton are proud to release the next edition in their Bartók ‘New Series’. Again the magic combination of Zoltán Kocsis and Barnabás Kelemen comes to the fore with an award-winning performance of the Violin and Piano Sonatas.

Béla Bartók (1881–1945) is considered by many to be the greatest Hungarian composer, as well as one of the most significant musical voices of the 20th century. Self-taught and originally trained as a pianist, he wrote in a number of genres for a variety of different instruments; his works for violin, two of which make up this release, rank among his finest achievements.

This exciting follow-up to Antal Zalai’s previous recording of Bartók’s early works and transcriptions for violin, performed with József Balog, begins with the composer’s Sonata for solo violin of 1944 – a monumental expression of his compositional mastery and defiant will in the face of death. Written for Yehudi Menuhin, a notable interpreter of the Hungarian’s compositions, the work draws on the music of J.S. Bach through its chaconne and fugue-based movements, representing a veritable exercise in the most complex virtuosity.

With ferocity and intensity dominating the sonata, the 44 Duos for two violins that follow offer a stark contrast in character. From the chitinous whirrings of the ‘Mosquito Dance’ to the oriental passion of the ‘Arabian Song’, these concise studies not only allow Bartók’s love of Hungarian folk song to come to the fore, they also cater for beginners as well as the most highly skilled performers. They are a charming conclusion to a collection that, containing expert performances from two of the world’s leading violinists, brims with colour and traverses the full range of violin techniques.