Catalogue Connection: 25222

We’re catching up on the backlog of classical CDs we’ve had and this quality programme from Divine Art came out, cough cough, some time ago. If Ysaÿe hadn’t died in 1931 he’d have a missed a birthday, put it like that.

It’s a delightful album that showcases the range and virtuosity of Ysaÿe, with violinist Sherban Lupu a specialist in his work. Given the title of the album and the fact that the album features a selection of Ysaye’s lesser-known works, it’s probably new music for most people and it’s well worth buying — the record sleeve notes say that the Belgian composer is “recognised as one of the greatest violin virtuosos of the 19th and early 20th centuries” and regarded as the king of the violin by Nathan Milstein, the Russian-born American virtuoso violinist.

The album as a whole is very listenable and attractive; the sleeve notes say that Ysaÿe was noted for his “kindness and enthusiasm” so perhaps some of that comes through his music. The sleeve also says that he was “a true avant-garde composer” whose works feature “revolutionary” violin technique but there’s not a moment of “avant-garde” sound to make it difficult.

The album opens with dramatic piano (Henri Bonamy) and violin but then the first of two Scènes Sentimentale settles down to being a showcase for the range of the violin and a dense piece that nicely combines the dramatic and sensitive, and perhaps a little romantic. The second Scènes Sentimentale is more of the same, perhaps the music to an old silent movie where love is declared.

All but one track is a world premiere recording and the result of research in the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels and the Royal Conservatoire of Liège and the next piece, Elégie, was discovered with no title and no ending, both added here.

Trois Etudes-Poèmes are next, the first clearly drawing influence from folk music and sounding both a little English and a little Latin American, a tango in Argentina maybe.

The violin and piano accompaniment continues in similar vein until the Violin Concerto in G minor, which switches from two instruments to the full Liepaja Symphony Orchestra. This has been reconstructed by Lupu and orchestrated by Sabin Pautza, Lupu describing it as “a historical milestone towards understanding Ysaÿe’s creative genius”. The change is a little startling; the piece starts with a dramatic swelling of strings, hits a domineering and majestic section before a short violin solo returns the music to the less imposing. The orchestra jumps in and a melody echoes a more famous tune, Elgar maybe, before the solo violin returns and largely remains, the piece refraining much of the sounds from the earlier pieces, from intimate to dramatic.

Sherban Lupu presents a gift of a disc here. It is amazing to hear the stories in the interview above that led to the resurfacing of this music. Every single piece is of great caliber, and Lupu gives each piece its all. His advocacy is never once in doubt. For the pieces with piano, he is more than ably partnered by pianist Henri Bonamy. The first of the Scènes sentimentales featured here is No. 3. This music is charming, yes, but it has a core of strength behind it that gives it substance. The music dates from the time of the composer’s decision to leave Berlin and return to Paris to make a life as a concert violinist. There does indeed seem to be a sense of freedom here, and Lupu communicates this viscerally in the way he throws himself into the technical challenges. The second piece chosen from the Scènes sentimentales is No. 5, very much its companion’s sibling emotionally but perhaps with a more extroverted edge. It is worth turning the ears towards Henri Bonamy’s playing here, for although there is no doubt that the violin is the featured instrument, the music itself is inspired. Ysaÿe’s melodies are to die for, and he seems possessed of an infinite fountain of them.

The Elégie is rather later; the Scènes date from 1885, the Elégie from around 1912. The Elégie is darker, more veiled, and Lupu responds with a deliciously conspiratorial tone, as if whispering a secret into one’s ears; the harmonies, too, are more sophisticated. The three Etudes-Poèmes, a wonderful hybrid title, date from 1924 and comprise “Serenade,” “Au ruisseau,” and “Cara memoria.” They were intended for publication as a set in 1924, but that never came to fruition. It is the world’s loss, and it is our gain that they are here now. The “Serenade” is a glorious outpouring (and not without wit in Lupu and Bonamy’s performance), while the central “Au ruisseau,” with its emphasis on double-stoppings, bonds technique with expression in what must surely be a finger-twisting way. Lupu finds great suavite here as well as lyricism, with Bonamy perfectly judged in the background (the positioning in the recording of both of them is fabulous). Finally, “Cara memoria” is as sweet as the title suggests. This final piece is by some way the longest, at over 11 minutes (the other two are 3 or 4), which gives the music space to stretch. It is cast as a funeral march, its relentless tread nevertheless relatively unthreatening. Its effect is cumulative, and as the piece progresses the harmonies seem to twist and turn.

The short Petite Fantaisie romantique pretty much does what it says on the tin, but with awe-inspiring expertise. Lupu’s violin positively sings here with a most appealing insouciance (it is also the only piece here that is not receiving a world premiere recording). But the real work of archaeology here is the G-Minor Violin Concerto of 1910, heard in Sabin Pautza’s 2017 orchestration, clearly a labor of love. Cast in one 25-minute span, the work is patently inspired, and there is a complementary sense of discovery with the musicians of the Liepaja Symphony. The work sums up the achievements of the composer’s middle period The violin entrance is remarkable, with what sounds initially like a full-blown cadenza right at the opening; more than this, the violin takes the music to more extreme grounds than the orchestra has so far dared to traverse. The booklet notes for the release describe this solo section as a “prayer”; it certainly stands in contrast to the outdoorsy freshness of the subsequent orchestral passage. There is no doubt that conductor Paul Mann fully understands the structure of the work, and his grasp of individual outbursts’ trajectory is sure and fast.

The technical demands of the concerto are huge, and Lupu is remarkable here—nay, inspired, be it in the more assertive passages or in the searching demeanor of the development (from 8:13). It is true that one can hear the influence of Debussy at times, but the overall impression is of a strong individual compositional voice. The violin’s songful ruminations are perfectly integrated with the orchestra’s tapestry, and the Divine Art recording allows maximal detail through.

The whole experience of the G-Minor Concerto is not just that of experiencing the new; it is experiencing a new piece that is artfully, masterly constructed and which contains real passages of genius. The way the composer is able to reconcile moments of real dissonance with others of sheer melodic expansion is remarkable. The orchestration, too, is a work of art in itself, in particular in the deft handling of the woodwind instruments, and also allows for moments of real sonic revelation: listen around the 10-minute mark to glowing harmonies and scoring that Zemlinsky would not have been ashamed of. And yet there is no contradiction in the inclusion of a slinky dance around the 17-minute mark. (Notice how Ysaÿe can slip a tonally based phrase easily into more progressive territories, and out again; it really is masterly.) Brass are used sparingly but at moments of power, while orchestral strings carry Romantic melodies of great sweep (clearly relished by the musicians in this recording). The concerto is a gift to music from the world of musicological academia. Brought to life by performers who show the utmost commitment, this is an unmissable disc that introduces a work of real substance. Without doubt, a most important recording. Now I just want to hear the piece in a live performance.

Romanian violinist Sherban Lupu possesses both the technique and the musicality to make this disc, titled Eugene Ysaÿe: Violin Discoveries, a success. It is an important addition to the discography of the famous Belgian violin virtuoso and composer, because everything here is a premiere recording except for the five-minute Petite fantaisie romantique. The disc is complemented by very thorough program notes by Qianyi Fan, a student of Lupu’s.

Although everything on the program ranks as a discovery, the major news is the Violin Concerto in G Minor. The score is actually a reconstruction by Lupu, with orchestration by Sabin Pautza, a Romanian composer and conductor. The story of its origins is complex but well told in the notes. Ysaÿe made a number of attempts to complete this concerto, the final one in 1910, which is written out in a piano score. There are some pages of orchestration from earlier versions, which served as the basis of Pautza’s edition.

Whatever its tangled history, this is a significant addition to the repertoire of late Romantic-era violin concertos. It is as attractive, and a bit less predictable, as anything I’ve encountered by Wieniawski or Vieuxtemps, both of whom were Ysaÿe’s teachers. The concerto is in one continuous movement, with a variety of moods and tempos. It features soaring lyricism alongside virtuosic passages of double-stops that require complete control of the bow. Lupu plays beautifully, integrating the flashy moments into the whole. Recognizing the shortcomings of a verbal description, I would say that the idiom is a mixture of Romanticism and Impressionism. The Liepaja Symphony Orchestra from Latvia under Paul Mann accompanies Lupu with sensitivity and a sense of involvement. This work would make a more welcomed addition to the repertoire than yet another performance of Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Bruch.

This release is the result of research done by Lupu, who was a pupil of one of Ysaÿe’s favorite students, Joseph Gingold. Inspired by Gingold’s stories about Ysaÿe, Lupu began searching for archived manuscripts, concentrating on the libraries in Brussels and Liege. In the library of the Royal Conservatoire of Liege he was directed to a massive stack of Ysaÿe manuscripts, which Lupu describes as being about “12 feet long and three feet high.” The music recorded here was all discovered during that research project.

The Scènes sentimentales were composed in 1885, about the time that Ysaÿe decided to embark on a career as a soloist, giving up his position in a prominent Berlin beer-hall orchestra (it later evolved into the Berlin Philharmonic). At the age of 27 Ysaÿe the composer was still finding his individual voice; the two scenes chosen by Lupu are attractively lyrical and demonstrate a strong melodic gift.

Elégie was an incomplete score, lacking either a title or an ending. Lupu has provided both. As testimony to the composer’s growth, there is a darkness and harmonic adventurousness in the music, which was probably composed in 1912, that documents the composer’s growth.

The Trois études-poèmes were separate works that Ysaÿe brought together and intended to publish as a set in 1924. The second poème, “Au ruisseau,” consists almost exclusively of double-stops, but they serve a musical purpose and not merely a showy one. The third piece, “Cara memoria,’’ is the most impressive. At almost 12 minutes it is twice as long as the first two combined and constitutes true chamber music, with the piano part being much more than an accompaniment. The sound world is very French, exhibiting a bittersweet quality that is quite touching. From the Liege Conservatory trove, the Petite fantaisie romantique has a posthumous dedication from the composer’s son Antoine to Gingold in 1967: “You are such a wonderful pupil of Ysaÿe and a witness of his legacy, so you should enjoy this piece.” Such a tender miniature would make a lovely encore piece for any violinist. Lupu plays throughout with the necessary bravura but, more importantly, with the necessary elegance and poetry. Henri Bonamy is a sensitive pianist who interacts well with the violinist. The recorded sound is very well balanced. Anyone interested in the literature of the violin from this era is likely to be delighted to discover these additions to what we already know about Ysaÿe as a composer.

I’ve felt the pull of Ysaÿe ever since I first heard one of Oistrakh’s recordings of the Third Sonata—and that pull has only grown stronger over the years, even though (or perhaps because) the music is so elusive. It’s elusive along numerous axes. Stylistically, it resists classification, especially in the works from his mature years; emotionally, it is more likely to play with ambiguity than to engage in clear expression; formally, the music is apt to move in unexpected directions, although it’s more searching than meandering. Then, too, performances are elusive. While the Sonatas for Solo Violin have moved into the standard repertoire, you don’t often run into the rest of his output. Finally, the music is elusive because so much of it has been lost or—as this CD (Eugene Ysaÿe:Violin Discoveries) demonstrates—hidden away. Other than the Petite fantaisie romantique, which was recorded in 2018 by Philippe Graffin and Claire Desert, all of these works are disc premieres. Specifically, they are all the result of intense archeological research by violinist Sherban Lupu, who searched for them, discovered them, and went on to create performable editions (with a significant contribution from Sabin Pautza, who did the bulk of the orchestration for the concerto and who ingeniously fabricated a replacement for the missing piano part for the first of the Etudes-Poèmes). It would be hard to overstate the importance of this release.

The importance—and the aesthetic pleasure. Most striking is the concerto. Ysaÿe left a number of early concertos in various states of completion (see, for instance, Fanfare 32:5 and 43:6)—but this newly restored G-Minor work, from 1910, is something else again. Begun as early as 1893, it has a complicated genesis (well explained in Qianyi Fan’s first-rate notes), but in this final form, it’s a massive 25-minute movement exhibiting an expressive breadth I’ve not heard elsewhere in Ysaÿe’s output. Its presciently Herrmannesque opening leads, strikingly, to a passage for unaccompanied soloist. That early cadenza is followed by a complex movement where Elgarian surges (it’s easy to hear why he was so sympathetic to the Elgar Violin Concerto) are interwoven with passages reminiscent of Debussy at his darkest (the gloomier moments of Pelleas, for instance), a movement where patches of bittersweet Tchaikovskian lyricism dissolve into shocking violence, a movement that eventually builds to a grand ending that (surprisingly) sounds like a shout-out to Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony. Then, too, while it’s harmonically more conventional than some of Ysaÿe’s later pieces, it still throws you off balance in troubling ways. Yet despite this stylistic disparity, despite the harmonic slippages, the music never sounds like a hodge-podge. You may never be able to guess what’s coming, but whatever does happen seems, in retrospect, well motivated. Without access to the manuscripts, it’s hard to tell just how much editorial intervention there has been—but as it stands, it’s a work well worth knowing, even if your interest in Ysaÿe has not gotten much beyond the sonatas.

If the concerto had appeared by itself on a CD, I probably wouldn’t even have complained about short measure. But there are plenty of treasures in the shorter works here, too: in the late Romantic combination of honey and fireworks in the first of the Scenes, in the deliciously unstable harmonies of the Elégie, in the off-kilter “Serenade” that opens the Etudes-Poèmes, and especially in the long and wrenching journey through grief to resignation in the Cara memoria funeral march that closes it. Sherban Lupu has gotten rave reviews on these pages, especially for his series devoted to reviving the music of Heinrich Ernst; and the same technical skill, interpretive sensitivity, and exploratory commitment are on display here, with knowing support from Henri Bonamy. Paul Mann, a conductor who also has a fine record of adventurous repertoire, gets solid playing from the Liepaja Symphony; and Divine Art’s engineering leaves no grounds for complaint. All in all, a significant release.

Eugene Ysaÿe: Violin Discoveries (Divine Art) is a heartfelt and affectionate tribute not just to the legendary Belgian violinist and composer, but to one of his most distinguished pupils. Violinist Sherban Lupu studied with Joseph Gingold in the 1970s at Indiana University. Gingold, a beloved teacher and himself a distinguished violinist, studied with Ysaÿe in Belgium from 1927-30. Gingold told Lupu that “Ysaÿe often improvised and that his improvisations were far more interesting than the six sonatas he wrote. However, at the same time he was writing music continuously. Therefore, I felt it was my duty, my task, and my calling to try to find out what else Ysaÿe wrote. It is a tribute to my teacher.” In pursuit of this “calling,” Lupu visited the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels, and the Royal Conservatory of Liege. In the latter institution, Lupu found a stack of Ysaÿe manuscripts, “Twelve feet long and three feet [in height].” Lupu searched through those documents, which provided the source material for the pieces heard on this release. All receive their world premiere recordings here, with the exception of the Petite fantaisie romantique (c. 1901). The manuscript of this work that resides at the Liege Conservatory includes a dedication from Ysaÿe’s son Antoine to Gingold: “You are a wonderful pupil of Ysaÿe and a witness to his legacy, so you should enjoy this piece.” Lupu edited the various pieces from the source manuscripts, “adding fingerings and bowings.” Some additional work was required. For Ysaÿe’s Elégie (c. 1912), Lupu fashioned the title, and completed the work’s ending. The manuscript for the first of the three Etudes-Poèmes (1924), “Serenade,” included only a violin part. However, the existence of two bars of rest at the work’s outset suggested that Ysaÿe contemplated a piano as well. Composer Sabin Pautza creno accompaniment for this recording. Pautza also orchestrated the Ysaÿe Violin Concerto in G Minor (1910). At least four separate manuscripts of this work exist, and they document a compositional process that spanned 1893-1910. The manuscripts contain various references to instrumentation of the music assigned to the piano. Pautza used this information to craft his orchestration.

I am grateful to Sherban Lupu for all of his devoted and tireless work to make these Ysaÿe compositions available to the public. It appears that Ysaÿe intended this music for his own performance (Ysaÿe, at various times, did contemplate dedicating the Violin Concerto to a pupil at the Brussels Royal Conservatoire, and to George Enescu). Both contemporary accounts of Ysaÿe’s playing, and precious recordings he made in the early part of the 20th century, document the artistry of a consummate musician. Ysaÿe played with a gorgeous tonal quality, impeccable intonation, a complete mastery of technical hurdles, and a beguiling gift of phrasing. All of the featured works afford the violinist abundant opportunities to display these qualities. The various pieces are beautifully crafted, with beguiling melodies and harmonies cast in an accessible late-Romantic idiom. The works for violin and piano are self-contained concert works, designed to be part of a recital program. The Violin Concerto is cast in a single movement in sonata form. The orchestration, as conceived by Sabin Pautza, is quite colorful, suggesting at times Komgold’s sound world. It would be a tall order indeed
to expect a violinist to evoke in these works the spirit of Ysaÿe’s mastery. That said, Sherban Lupu’s committed and musical performances are more than sufficient to allow enjoyment and appreciation of these welcome Ysaÿe discoveries. Lupu is ably partnered by pianist Henri Bonamy and, in the concerto, by the Liepaja Symphony Orchestra and conductor Paul Mann. The recorded sound is fine, although I would have preferred a bit less resonance surrounding the violin. Qianyi Fan’s liner notes offer a great deal of pertinent information, and convey the devotion Sherban Lupu lavished upon this project. This is a most valuable and welcome release.

I have long been intrigued by the music of Eugene Ysaÿe (1858-1931), the celebrated Belgian violinist and composer. That someone who could have simply produced bonbons (as did other violinists of his era who dabbled in composing) managed to become a musical creator of substance, and that without any formal compositional training, I find remarkable. Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas for Solo Violin have been rightly celebrated and much performed, but the rest of his sizable output (most of it employing the violin) is less well known. Everything I’ve heard convinces me that Ysaÿe is a composer of stature, not merely a “violinist’s composer,” and worthy to sit beside the other important French and Belgian writers of his time. The music is forward-looking, resonant, eclectic, and sits at an interesting crosscurrent between late Romantic, Impressionist, and early modem influences. Ysaÿe was much respected as an interpretive artist and as a human being, and his compositions leave us a legacy of his artistic personality we would not otherwise have.

Ysaÿe was modest and reticent about publishing his pieces, and much of what he wrote still hasn’t seen the light of day. The present release is momentous in that it presents several Ysaÿe works never before heard, most importantly a violin concerto which he labored over and revised over nearly two decades. Ysaÿe is known to have composed at least half a dozen violin concertos, all unpublished, which have only gradually been brought to light. Romanian violinist Sherban Lupu has been working to unearth Ysaÿe’s manuscripts for several years now. The notes to this disc recount how he traveled to the library of the Royal Conservatory of Liege and found a pile of Ysaÿe manuscripts “sitting on the floor and covered in one inch of dust.” He proceeded to piece together the pages of the concerto, which as he discovered exists in four different versions written from 1893 to 1910. Lupu found a piano part for the concerto, but only fragments of orchestration, so Romanian composer Sabin Pautza orchestrated the piece in its entirety.

The concerto is a dark and brooding one-movement fantasia (Ysaÿe originally titled it Poème concertant) and one of the most extraordinary violin concertos I have heard. Some of the writing is of a surprising modernity for 1910, let alone 1893. Interestingly, we hear some pre-echoes of the solo sonatas. After a long, churning orchestral introduction, the violin enters with an unaccompanied monologue (the annotator says this is a unique occurrence in violin concertos of the 18th to the 20^th century). With its twisting chromatic chant over a G-string drone, listeners may be reminded of the “Musette” variation in the Second Solo Sonata, although the effect here is much darker. Ysaÿe’s plan for the rest of the work roughly follows a broad sonata form, but his treatment is free and rhapsodic, and there is much passionate and compelling dialogue between the violin and the orchestra. The annotator hears the violin part as “desperately attempting through a prayer to reach God for answers” and the orchestra as intervening like a Greek chorus. Stylistically this concerto places Ysaÿe among the “advanced” composers of his day, and it is clear we are quite a long way from the world of Vieuxtemps and Saint-Saëns. The violin part bristles with difficulties both technical and expressive.

The rest of the selections on the disc, for violin and piano, also come from unpublished manuscripts uncovered by Lupu. They range in date from 1885 (Scènes sentimentales) to 1924 (Trois Etudes-Poèmes). The most notable among these morceaux are the short and eloquent Elégie and the third of the Trois Etudes-Poèmes, entitled “Cara memoria,” which is long and equally eloquent (and recalls the mood of the well-known Poème Elegiaque). The Elégie came without a title or an ending, so Lupu supplied both. The haunting melancholy of this piece makes it among the finer morceaux of Ysaÿe I have heard.

The violinist’s performance is somewhat variable. He plays always with temperament and panache, but the chamber pieces suffer from some uningratiating tone and intonation, which are aggravated by rather reverberant recorded sound. The concerto is far better recorded, and the violinist’s wiry tone gives the work an appropriately gothic character in places. The Liepaja Symphony Orchestra from Latvia is a fine ensemble and manages to make the thick orchestration perfectly clear and transparent, so that the genius of Ysaÿe’s writing shines through. Sabin Pautza has done a highly attractive and ear-catching job of orchestration, even including what sound like xylophone and chimes. For the music alone, this is an important release which all fans of the Franco-Belgian violin school should hear. The concerto in particular is a startling discovery which will be of interest to violinists everywhere.

This album with seven first recordings results from Sherban Lupu’s rummaging in literally dusty Belgian archives, especially at Liège Royal Conservatoire. A major discovery is the third Etudes-Poème (Cara memoria), a funeral march with lyrical passages and a dramatic climax. The third Scène sentimentale launches the programme boldly, with a lovely second theme; the fifth is attractive; the Élégie, completed and named by Lupu, is quite grave; the first Etude-Poème, a swaying Sérénade, has been given a piano part by Sabin Pautza; the attractive second features double-stops; and the adorable Petite fantaisie romantique, the only piece previously recorded, has a muted ending.

For the 1893–1910 G minor Concerto, Lupu consulted many partial versions and four more or less complete. Pautza orchestrated it based on Ysaÿe’s existing fragments of scoring. The opening tutti is interrupted by a violin cadenza and a second cadenza comes towards the end. In one movement lasting 25 minutes, the work calls for furious fiddling but halfway through an attractive contrasting theme appears.

Lupu’s intonational control has slipped a little from its perfection in his prime – he was 67 at the time of the sessions – but his understanding of Ysaÿe’s idiom is total. Bonamy is a sensitive partner and the sound is good.

It should not need saying, but it’s always a mistake to think you know a composer from just a handful of their works. Whilst a selection of pieces might give you some insights, they’ll hardly ever complete the picture. Such a case in point is Eugene Ysaÿe, the great Belgian violin virtuoso-composer. Which of his works are regularly played or recorded apart from the six solo violin sonatas? (Five recordings of them are scheduled for release in the coming months). Yet, there are a legion of other works out there to be enjoyed. Phillipe Graffin recorded a posthumous seventh sonata and the Petite Fantasie Romantique on his well received 2019 release Fiddler’s Blues (Avie AV2399).  Now, this latest release from Romanian violinist Sherban Lupu whets my appetite for Ysaÿe’s compositions still further.

I have known and admired Sherban Lupu’s work for many years. His promotion of the major and lesser-known violin repertoire of George Enescu (much of which he discovered, painstakingly edited and subsequently published and recorded on Toccata Classics) is worthy of greater attention. Incidentally, a second volume of Unknown Enescu is long overdue. I referenced his ground-breaking recording of the Caprice Roumain in an earlier blog post reviewing a new recording of the piece and I feel that Lupu’s reading still comes out on top. That led to a fine recording of music by the all-but-unknown – outside Romania at least – composer Theodor Grigoriu. Then a series of six releases focussed on the music of Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, another composer of finger-achingly virtuosic violin music, also for Toccata Classics. Some violinists, even top flight ones, occasionally programme or record a work Enescu or Ernst to prove their credentials, but Sherban Lupu really lays down the gauntlet and shows what he’s made of by taking monumental challenges head on.

This latest release, on which all but one short track is a world premiere recording, is the result of many years’ research in the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels and the Royal Conservatoire of Liège. Qianyi Fan’s lengthy booklet essay makes clear that with this project, Lupu pays homage to Joseph Gingold, with whom he studied in the 1970s. Gingold himself studied with Ysaÿe for three years from 1972. Qianyi Fan’s excellent essay also gives background on Ysaÿe and each of the works, including many insightful comments from Lupu himself.

The first half of the recording is devoted to duo works for violin and piano, and throughout Henri Bonamy proves to be an accompanist who matches Lupu’s temperament with ease. Two Scènes Sentimentales from 1885 open the disc and they bring to the fore two qualities that recur throughout. The first one, no.3, is passionate and forthright as one might expect from a youthful work – its solo part is dispatched with sweeping virtuosity by Lupu whilst Bonamy holds nothing back either. The second, no.5, is a more reflective scene in which both parts are given playing of shading and nuance.

A five-minute Élégie (c. 1912 – Lupu’s title) is an elegant morceau de salon. As it lacked an ending upon discovery, Lupu provides his own effective one, based upon the earlier material. It’s a piece that I can see becoming a pleasing encore for any virtuoso out there, as its main melody lingered long in my memory. Lupu’s traversal of the Petite Fantasie Romantique is altogether more sensuous than that of Phillipe Graffin, which sounds just a bit emotionally detached by comparison.

In 1924, Ysaÿe organised three pieces written on separate occasions into the collection Trois Etudes-Poèmes, potentially for a publication that was never realised. The first piece, Sérénade, was found without a piano accompaniment, and the Romanian composer Sabin Pauţza provided one at Lupu’s request. The result brings out the somewhat elliptical and humorous nature of the violin line to winning effect. It’s not hard to detect the etude-like quality of the writing in the middle movement, Au ruisseau. The technical demands made of double-stopping are dispatched with ease by Lupu, whilst Bonamy doesn’t neglect his piano’s tone even in forte. The trio of works ends with its lengthiest component, the twelve-minute Cara memoria. Somewhere between a funeral march and a rhapsody, it stretches not only the listener’s emotions but the violinist’s technique with its emotional breadth and colour palette. Where perhaps another take might have resulted in cleaner playing of some passages, instead you experience the brio and driving dynamism within this somewhat daunting composition. I’d rather have it as realised every time, it does Ysaÿe’s writing many favours.

The big draw for many though will be the single-movement concerto, which takes the concerto form along the path of concentration, much as Sibelius took in his pioneering seventh symphony. It is in this concerto, as well as Cara memoria, that you hear Ysaÿe’s compositional style at its most daring and pioneering on this recording. On first audition it is a somewhat episodic work – a point of view that is perhaps emphasised by Sabin Pauţza’s colourful and atmospheric orchestration. There’s plenty of interest in the instrumental timbres employed, from refulgent deployment of the strings to some intricate playing in the percussion section. It might also be tempting to draw inferences from works that Ysaÿe is known to have played, such as the Elgar concerto. For all that, it’s still the solo part that just about knits the parts together into a comprehensible whole. It is also noticeable how Sherban Lupu’s playing responds to the extra impetus that the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra provide under Paul Mann’s assured direction. On repeated listening, both the work and interpretation hold the attention as they build towards a knowingly crafted bravura ending.
Given Lupu’s past association with Toccata Classics and its stated objective to promote ‘unknown music by great composers’ or a specialist label such as Musique en Wallonie which has done much to promote Ysaÿe’s music, it is to Divine Art’s credit that they secured the release of this recording. The recordings, made in Romania (duo pieces) and Latvia (concerto) serve the music well to capture the sense of urgency these performances deliver to reveal new aspects of Ysaÿe’s writing for the violin.

The rediscovery of fine, unfairly neglected works of past times is an ongoing pleasure in classical music today, with more and more artists performing works that go beyond the mainstream ones for which composers are known – and with new findings occurring with considerable regularity. To be sure, much re-found music and many re-found composers turn out to be justifiably obscure; but it is nevertheless remarkable how many really fine pieces of music have slipped through the cracks of history, providing opportunities for today’s performers to explore unfamiliar repertoire that certainly deserves a better fate than it has had to date.

A new Divine Art CD featuring Sherban Lupu playing music by Eugène Ysaÿe is a fine example of works whose near-total obscurity is difficult to understand. Only the brief, charming and unprepossessing Petite fantaisie romantique of 1901 has been recorded before – everything else here is a world première recording, and the G minor Violin Concerto of 1910 was wholly unknown until Lupu helped reconstruct it and Sabin Pautza orchestrated it as recently as 2017. The concerto, in a single very extended movement, is the major work on this disc, and it is a real find. Unexpectedly, given Ysaÿe’s virtuoso reputation, the concerto begins with a two in-depth minutes of orchestral exposition before the violin even enters. And when the soloist does appear, it quickly becomes apparent that this is not a virtuoso vehicle but a complex, forward-looking-for-its-time study in interactivity between solo and ensemble. Since Ysaÿe did not orchestrate the work, it is impossible to know to what extent the actual sound of the concerto is what the composer intended – but the harmonic elements and instrumental interplay, which often sound like a mixture of Richard Strauss and Ravel, show that Ysaÿe was looking well beyond the Romantic era while clearly incorporating the musical richness and emotional intensity of that time period. Lupu plays the concerto with real panache, and Paul Mann provides sure-handed support – just as pianist Henri Bonamy does for the remainder of the pieces heard here.

The Scènes Sentimentales date to 1885, when Ysaÿe was 27, and were designed as showcases for the composer’s performance techniques. They are effective in that respect, if not musically very memorable. The first two of the Trois Études-Poèmes (1924), the latest music here, are also primarily technical showpieces, but the third and by far the longest, called Cara memoria, is a fully developed work with elements of tone poem and sonata movement – written with less of a “modern” harmonic approach than the first two pieces, but far more effectively constructed. And the Élégie of 1912, which is the same length as the Petite fantaisie romantique, is less of a salon piece than the earlier work and more of a study in Impressionism, albeit only in a general sense. This CD is a remarkably engaging exploration of some byways of the violin’s past, and it points quite clearly to the many fine works that Ysaÿe wrote for his instrument beyond the six famous solo violin sonatas of the 1920s.

Eugène Ysaÿe, brother of pianist and composer Théo Ysaÿe, was a composer and conductor as well as one of the greatest violinists who ever lived.  Born in Liege, Belgium, in 1858, he started violin lessons at the age of five and made his first public appearance at seven. He went on to become the leading violinist of his time, combining beauty of tone with great technical ability and depth of musical expression. Pablo Casals claimed never to have heard a violinist play in tune before Ysaÿe, and Carl Flesch called him ‘the most outstanding and individual violinist I have ever heard in my life.’

Ysaÿe was also an accomplished avant-garde composer, perhaps best known for his Six Sonatas for Solo Violin. These set a new standard by which to judge a violinist’s technical prowess and are masterpieces of the genre, opening the way to the later sonatas by Bartók and Prokofiev, as well as those by Hindemith and the preludes and fugues by Reger. Given his reputation as ‘The King of the Violin’ it seems surprising that many of his works remain unknown, unpublished and unrecorded.

This album presents for the first time several works for violin and piano ranging from 1885 to 1924, and a previously unknown Violin Concerto from 1910. The internationally known Romanian violinist Sherban Lupu studied in London with Yehudi Menuhin and other leading teachers and has a busy career, being best known for his discovery, publication and performance of the music of Enescu. He also has held prestigious posts in Italy and Romania and as concertmaster of San Francisco Opera, USA. He is accompanied here by the award-winning young French pianist Henri Bonamy (who was Professor of Piano in Seoul, Korea and now teaches in Munich) and the excellent orchestra of Liepaja, Latvia. The conductor is Paul Mann who has made a name recently with his recordings for Toccata Classics. These are exuberant and passionate performances of brilliant music. Highlights include Scènes Sentimentales Nos. 3 and 5 (written to showcase the composer’s virtuosity), the enchanting Élégie, the evocative Trois Études-Poèmes and the Violin Concerto in G minor, completed and orchestrated by Sabin Pautza in 2017.

Romanian-born Sherban Lupu, a superior exponent of the music of his compatriot Enescu, is also a strong presence on Toccata’s discs in their collective devotion to the finger-busting pyrotechnics of the Moravian, Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst. Divine Art’s release pursues a similarly exploratory but more focused examination of recent archive discoveries of the music of Ysaÿe.

It might be worthwhile to note here that there is a great deal of confusion regarding the Violin Concertos in particular. Examples new to disc do appear and because they carry no opus number – they weren’t published, in the main – they are only distinguishable by their key and year of composition, if known. Someone is going to have to get to grips with this legacy and create a proper catalogue of his music, but before that can happen these things need to be discovered and edited.

Therefore, it was valuable that Lupu visited the music libraries in Brussels and Liège in 2012 and found numerous examples of works new to the Ysaÿe recorded catalogue, largely in Liège, the city of the violinist-composer’s birth. With the exception of the Petite fantaisie Romantique, everything is new to disc and given that Lupu studied for a number of years with Joseph Gingold, an Ysaÿe student, one can expect stylish and apt musicianship from him.

He makes no secret of his age and was around 67 when the first tranche of recordings was made but has retained technical control and his tonal breadth and colour and he’s edited, fingered and bowed the new music that has emerged from the archives. There are two Scènes Sentimentales dating from 1885, the first (No 3) a brilliantly youthful and virtuosic piece with a refined romanticism at its core and carrying an inbuilt challenge to a performer’s intonation. No 5, by contrast, has an ingratiating salon intimacy though it carries incremental expressive intensity. Élégie is a much later work composed around 1912 and bears the title Lupu gave it, as the manuscript is untitled. He also added the final bars. It’s a diverting piece, largely because of its harmonic interest and in terms of its changeable moods which are largely melancholy but subject to some typically demanding technical excursions.

The Trois Études-Poèmes were composed at around the same time that Ysaÿe wrote his great solo violin sonatas. There’s a sinuous Iberian aura in the first, its dance measures impressively galvanizing, whilst the central one is very much more along etude-like lines. By far the most substantial and noteworthy is the long, 12-minute final panel. This encodes a Funeral March but it’s couched in an intriguingly rhapsodic form that reaches an apex of disquiet and emotional intensity. This is a particularly difficult piece to get around and Lupu serves the composer well with only a few moments of strain. It’s fairly clear why the charming, if conventional Petite fantaisie Romantique is the only piece here to have been recorded. In all these works Lupu is sympathetically accompanied by Henri Bonamy.

The biggest work is the Violin Concerto in G minor of 1910. It went through a rather complex history going back as far as 1893, which you can read about in Qianyi Fan’s excellent and detailed booklet notes. Probably intended for Enescu, later the dedicatee of the ‘Ballade’ solo sonata, it lacks orchestration and so this has been provided by Sabin Pautza. There’s a prayerful component to the opening followed immediately by a rather Elgarian passage – a product of their shared late-romantic inheritance, one supposes, though Ysaÿe did famously give the German première of the Elgar Concerto in January 1912, shortly after the final version of his own G minor concerto was written. Aptly orchestrated, one surmises, the concerto has attractive, elastic lyric paragraphs, quietly housing some Debussian-Delian passages. There’s a good cadenza and the work ends boldly with a confident peroration, resonantly delivered by the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra under Paul Mann.

This is a valuable disc that, in its presentation of so many ‘discoveries’, offers insights into Ysaÿe’s compositional directions over four decades.

This is the sort of album I can understand being recorded and released, because Eugène Ysaÿe’s six solo violin sonatas are true masterpieces. Written in the 1920s, they are a far cry from the usual fare written by other late-Romantic-era violinists such as Kreisler or Elman, and I was really thrilled when violinist Philippe Graffin discovered a seventh sonata that was unpublished but nearly as good as the established six.As Qianyi Fan points out in the liner notes, “many of his works remain unknown and unpublished,” probably because his world renown as an interpreter of the Romantic repertoire overshadowed his compositional talent.

Though the six famous sonatas were published, it was years and years before they began to be played in public with any regularity and several decades before they were established as masterpieces. In addition, for whatever reason, Ysaÿe himself underplayed his compositional talent:

In the days of Viotti and Rode the harmonic possibilities were more limited— they had only a few chords, and hardly any chords of the ninth. But now harmonic material for the development of a new violin technique is there: I have some violin studies, in manuscripts, which I may publish someday, devoted to that end. I am always somewhat hesitant about publishing—there are many things I might publish, but I have seen so much brought out that was banal, poor, unworthy, that I have always been inclined to mistrust the value of my own creations rather than fall into the same error. We have the scale of Debussy and his successors to draw upon, their new chords and successions of fourth and fifths—for new technical formulas are always evolved out of and follow after new harmonic discoveries—though there is as yet no violin method which gives a fingering for the whole tone scale. Perhaps we will have to wait until Kreisler or I will have written one which makes plain the new flowering of technical beauty and aesthetic development which it brings to the violin.

Of the pieces recorded here, we have some descriptions from the booklet. The Scènes Sentimentales were composed when Ysaÿe left Berlin for Paris to become a concert violinist (1885), thus they were written to showcase his virtuosity. The Élegie (c. 1912) was a manuscript that had no title and no ending. The Trois Études-Poèmes (1924), actually written at different times and dedicated to different people, were grouped by Ysaÿe himself and intended to be sent for publication but never done so. The Petite fantaisie romantique (1901) is just a piece of fluff written to mollify his listeners who wanted a “sweet” little piece, but the Violin Concerto (1910) is a fine piece, completed and orchestrated by Sabin Pautza in 2017.

Considering its time and place, the Scènes Sentimentales are late-Romantic but not entirely formulaic works. Ysaÿe was already pushing the harmonic envelope; though not based on the advances of Debussy and Ravel, it is clearly influenced by Richard Strauss. Its construction is quite interesting and hardly written-to-formula music. I listened carefully to Lupu’s playing and compared it in my mind’s ear to the way Ysaÿe himself sounded on those old records (though he lived until 1931, his playing skills had eroded by 1924 and he made no electrical recordings), and he actually comes very close to his model, using a sweet tone and employing a medium-wide vibrato on the held notes, just as Ysaÿe himself did. He also has a wonderfully fluid way of playing the fast passages, an occasionally wide portamento and a wonderful string attack which also compares favorably to his model. This is historically-informed performance style at its absolute best. The “Moderato” also contains restless mood shifts and downward-moving chromatics that look forward to the unaccompanied violin sonatas.

The 1912 Élegie already shows the influence of Debussy; except for the more passionate melodic line, it might pass for a violin piece by the latter, and once again Lupu nails Ysaÿe’s performing style—something that Graffin, for all his superb qualities, did not do. (May I suggest to Mr. Lupu that he record that seventh Ysaÿe sonata?) The first two Études-Poèmes are not as advanced as I thought they might be, but more a showcase for the violinist’s technique…though still more interesting than most of Kriesler’s compositions. The middle section of “Au ruisseau” is particularly interesting, yet the third piece, “Cara memoria,” sounds the least modern though it is, ironically, the most fully developed as a composition; it almost sounds like a sonata movement, with a particularly dramatic middle section, and near the end we hear Debussy-like harmonies sneak in.

As I noted above, the Petite fantaisie romantique is the least substantial piece on this disc although I’m sure it will appeal to Romantic music lovers everywhere, and the fast section has some interesting music. But also as noted above, the Violin Concerto is a masterpiece, fusing elements of French and early Russian modernism with a German sense of construction. You might not guess, from the ominous orchestral introduction, that this even was a violin concerto—the orchestral exposition, complex and fully developed, runs for more than four minutes before you even hear the solo violin—and you may have a hard time believing that it was written as far back as 1910. During the long violin solo, which almost sounds like a sinfonia concert ante, there is also his trademark chromatic harmonies. Although I fully realize that Ysaÿe himself did not orchestrate this piece, the music clearly suggests the kind of rich Germanic orchestration used here, with moments of Debussy as at the 8:50 mark. The whole enterprise sounds like later Strauss mixed with some Ravel and Debussy; not only is the music richly written, but also emotionally affecting, something that Debussy’s music is not always. Indeed, though the solo part is quite virtuosic, virtuosity is not its primary goal; like some of the better modern violin concerti I’ve reviewed, the underlying construction of the piece is a whole. This is not just a showcase for a fiddler thrown on top of a flashy orchestral part, but a real composition with quite complex interaction between soloist and ensemble. In short, this is quite a piece. Lupu must be congratulated for resuscitating these pieces and bringing them to life in a manner that almost sounds like the composer himself playing them. A truly stupendous achievement, recommended to all lovers of Ysaÿe’s sonatas.