Eugène Ysaÿe: Sonates pour violon

Thomas Zehetmair’s account of Ysaÿe’s third sonata, presented as a “preface” to Heinz Holliger’s recently released Violin Concerto, a work itself inspired by Ysaÿe, already gave evidence of this outstanding musician’s affinity for the work of the great violinist-composer. Now comes a recording of all six sonatas, which ranks amongst the most exceptional recordings of this demanding repertoire. The Ysaÿe sonatas belong, with Bach’s sonatas and partitas and Paganini’s caprices, to the masterworks of music for unaccompanied violin, and offer a comparable challenge to the interpreter.

Challenges are a way of life for Zehetmair, currently covering a great many bases with skill and verve and commitment. This is the player of whom conductor Simon Rattle has said, “He is maybe the only violinist today able to encompass every style of playing. He is a true child of period style, Romantic temperament and contemporary taste.” One of the earliest modern violinists to take an interest in period performance, he worked with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Concentus Musicus more than two decades ago, before the boom period for ‘historical performance practise’. Simultaneously, he has always been a passionate advocate of contemporary musical expression.

In the liner notes to the current release, Paul Griffiths writes: “Like Ysaÿe a century before, Thomas Zehetmair established himself as a musician with a personal vision and an inquiring mind, a player of passion and accuracy, an inspiring quartet leader, a conductor who sparks musical excitement even when he is not simultaneously performing as concerto soloist, and a friend of composers (in his case including Holliger and Kurtág). All of this is here, at the point of the bow. He burns himself into the music and disappears”.

In the 2003/4 season, the Austrian violinist received a veritable landslide of classical music awards – the Edison Award, the Gramophone Award, the Prix Caecilia, Diapason d’Or de L’Année and more – for his quartet’s ECM recording of Robert Schumann’s 1st and 3rd string quartets. Gramophone editor James Jolly wrote of “performances crackling with excitement”, a sentiment echoed in magazines and newspapers from the Nouvel Observateur to The Strad. This is a quality characteristic of Zehetmair’s work through the genres and in diverse roles, there is an edge and intensity to his delivery. He is engaged in “vigorous music-making”, as the New York Times has noted, and steers clear of any formulaic approach to performance. To America’s Fanfare magazine he explained that “individuality requires more responsibility to what the composers have written. And it can be acquired by developing a lot of possibilities for expression. It’s not enough to have one distinctive sound. You have to have a lot of different sounds, different vibratos, different ways of making a crescendo … In the end, though, individuality speaks through the soul and the heart.”

As the Zehetmair Quartet, founded in 1994, celebrates its tenth birthday, its leader is also actively engaged on other fronts. His reputation as a conductor, already growing through his work with the Camerata Bern (documented on ECM’s “Verklärte Nacht” recording of Schönberg, Bartók and Veress), and guest appearances with leading orchestras, received increased attention with his appointment as Music Director of England’s Northern Sinfonia.

Meanwhile, a non-stop touring schedule takes him, over the next three months, to Finland, Scotland, the USA, Belgium, France, Sweden, Japan and Italy working variously with the Zehetmair Quartet, Northern Sinfonia, Kremerata Baltica, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra National de Lyon, the Malmö Symphony Orcherstra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, the New Japan Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, the SWR Orchester Freiburg, and more, with conductors including Heinz Holliger, Kent Nagano, Michael Gielen, Vladimir Jurowsky… Details can be found at www.ecmrecords.com