Ysaÿe: 6 Sonatas for Violin Solo, Op. 27

Bach, Paganini, Ysaÿe. For classical violinists learning their instrument, these three composers are unassailable touchstones of technique and violin artistry. Bach and Paganini have, of course, long been household names. But the Belgian Eugène Ysaÿe? To most, he is a more shadowy figure. The American violinist Hilary Hahn’s new album seeks to alter that perception. Her performances of all six of Ysaÿe’s sonatas for solo violin are charged with the utter conviction that each one is a masterly jewel. “For violinists, these sonatas are very much core repertoire, we’ve all performed at least one at some point,” Hahn comments. “But to do them all together as an entire project is almost a specialist situation, because if you don’t have a relationship to the expression inside these works, it’s really difficult to find the flow of playing them. They don’t play themselves.” Unlocking the secrets of Ysaÿe’s sonatas may not be easy, but Hahn starts with a considerable advantage. Her teacher at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia was Jascha Brodsky, who himself had studied with Ysaÿe in the 1920s. The string of musical DNA connecting Hahn with Ysaÿe’s music is, she says, powerful and unbroken. “Listening to Ysaÿe’s recordings while I was in the studio making this album was uncanny,” she says. “I found that somehow I was playing much more like Ysaÿe than I ever did before, and I’m really proud of the direct lineage I have with his music through my teacher. The fact that it’s 100 years exactly since Ysaÿe completed these sonatas was another important impetus to this project.” Hahn’s natural identification with Ysaÿe’s idiom cuts through clearly in the bracing multi-stopped passages in the finale to Sonata No. 1, and in the playful scoops and pizzicatos of Sonata No. 5’s “Danse rustique”. Hahn herself picks out “Malinconia” from Sonata No. 2 as a movement of special personal significance. “It’s such a short movement, but I love the way it plays out, with a lilting feeling but also somehow a suspension of time,” says Hahn. “The violin has got the mute on at the beginning, you can go inside yourself, and it goes more and more inward. I could live in that world for weeks—it’s soothing and cleansing, and makes me feel good in my soul.” For those new to Ysaÿe’s solo violin sonatas, Hahn promises a substantial and riveting listening experience. “These sonatas are really dynamic, mercurial and impulsive, so it’s hard to just have them in the background,” she says. “They play with structure in a really interesting way, they’re engrossing and pull you in immediately.” The effect is, Hahn adds, “hypnotic—not by meditatively calming you down, but by bringing you in and spinning you around, mixing your feelings and senses together. It’s very emotional music, and with Spatial Audio you really get that feeling of it around your head. It’s really magical. I’ve fallen in love with it all over again.”