Rêves - Ysaÿe: Violin Concerto in E Minor, Poème Concertant

Chronique

Violinist Philippe Graffin, in his notes to this Avie release, states that violinists have long wished that composer/virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe had written a concerto. It turns out that he sketched one, which has been assembled from various sketches by musicologist Xavier Falques, and here receives its world premiere. There is also a Poème concertant, listed as "orchestrated by Erika Vega" (it is not quite clear what the original form of this work was). A good deal of musicological labor went into this album, from coordinating the sketches of the Violin Concerto in E minor to editing and reproducing the letters Ysaÿe sent to Irma Sèthe, the dedicatee of the Poème concertant and the composer's mistress at the time. What propelled the album onto classical best-seller charts in 2024, though, was not musicological thoroughness but the chance to hear new music by Ysaÿe, a composer whose popularity has been increasing ever since it once again became permissible to enjoy the pleasures of virtuosity. The violin concerto is not quite in a league with the unaccompanied sonatas from later in Ysaÿe's career (these are both early works), but especially in the finale, one can hear him developing the language of those, and it is quite a ride. Graffin is a fine exponent of the Belgian style who has played Ysaÿe before, and he is an expert in the kind of brilliant clarity the music demands. He gets strong support from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under conductor Jean-Jacques Kantorow and from pianist Marisa Gupta in the small pieces that round out the album. Anyone who likes Ysaÿe should hear this newly reconstructed music.

© James Manheim /TiVo