Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Three Sonatas for Violin & Fortepiano, Op. 1b, G.076-078

Album review

Recordings of music by Joseph Bologne (or Boulogne), Chevalier de Saint-Georges, have become more frequent, especially since the release of the 2023 biopic Chevalier. He certainly is an interesting figure, the son of a Senegalese slave in Guadeloupe who captivated Paris not only as a violinist-composer but as a fencer as well. However, the three violin sonatas here, published in 1781 and written somewhat earlier, have been infrequently heard since Jean-Jacques Kantorow first recorded them in 1979. They are worthy of wider exposure. What strikes one immediately is how much the violin has to do in them. Sample the Violin Sonata in G minor, Op. 1a, where it actually carries the main thematic material. On one hand, this is unsurprising, given that Bologne was surely performing this music himself. Yet the violin-and-piano sonata, or in the parlance of the day, sonata for keyboard and violin (the keyboard instrument may well have been a harpsichord), was in its infancy at the time and was often little more than a keyboard sonata with violin decoration. Bologne was far ahead of, say, the roughly contemporaneous Mozart violin sonatas K. 301-306 in terms of integrating the violin into the texture. Unlike Bologne's violin concertos, these pieces do not place heavy technical demands on the violinist, and they are in a sparkling and cheerful Parisian melodic idiom that definitely reminds one of Mozart's Parisian works and may have influenced them. Violinist Andrew McIntosh and fortepianist Steven Vanhauwaert, playing a replica of a Walter instrument, deliver clear but relaxed performances that capture the distinctive melodicism. The studio sound from the Olde Focus label (an offshoot of the contemporary music label New Focus) is clean and idiomatic. An attractive addition to the catalog of available recordings for this much-discussed composer.

© James Manheim /TiVo