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Eugène Ysaÿe
Sonata in D minor for Violin, Op. 27, No. 3, “Ballade”

- Born July 16, 1858, in Liège, Belgium
- Died May 12, 1931, in Brussels
- Composed in 1923
- Duration: 7 minutes

In the summer of 1923, Eugène Ysaÿe heard his friend Joseph Szigeti perform one of J. S. Bach’s solo violin sonatas. Afterwards, on his way to a sojourn at the beach in Le Zoute, Ysaÿe couldn’t stop thinking about the concert: “When one hears an artist like Szigeti, who is able to accommodate his playing to the rectangular lines of the great classics as easily as he can to the expressive melodies of the Romantics, one feels how absorbing it would be to compose a work for the violin whilst keeping ever before one the style of a particular violinist.” On arrival at the resort, he disappeared into his room for a couple of days and emerged with sketches of Six Violin Sonatas (Op. 27), each imagined with the sound of a specific artist ringing in his ears.

The first, second, and fourth sonatas allude both to their target violinist and to Bach’s approach to creating solo violin music. The others move away from Bach, focusing more exclusively on the violinist dedicatees. Sonata No. 3 in D minor was for George Enescu, whose approach to performing and writing music was infused with the techniques, microtonality, and structures of Romanian folk music. In his one-movement “Ballade” for Enescu, Ysaÿe refrains from directly appropriating these elements of style, and yet he does justice to his friend’s enormous flair as a player. A slow introduction explores uncanny, augmented sonorities, expressed primarily through chains of minor sixths, setting a tense and dramatic scene. Then the tempo kicks in and the violinist is off, shooting from low string to high and back down through an explosive, springing gesture. A more delicate, vaguely Baroque take on this motif occurs in the middle of the piece, but the shouting passions of the snapping rhythm soon take over once again before Ysaÿe leads us to a breathtaking close.

Cellist, writer, and music researcher Nicky Swett is a PhD candidate and Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge.

Eugène Ysaÿe
Sonata in D minor for Violin, Op. 27, No. 3, “Ballade”

- Born July 16, 1858, in Liège, Belgium
- Died May 12, 1931, in Brussels
- Composed in 1923
- Duration: 7 minutes

In the summer of 1923, Eugène Ysaÿe heard his friend Joseph Szigeti perform one of J. S. Bach’s solo violin sonatas. Afterwards, on his way to a sojourn at the beach in Le Zoute, Ysaÿe couldn’t stop thinking about the concert: “When one hears an artist like Szigeti, who is able to accommodate his playing to the rectangular lines of the great classics as easily as he can to the expressive melodies of the Romantics, one feels how absorbing it would be to compose a work for the violin whilst keeping ever before one the style of a particular violinist.” On arrival at the resort, he disappeared into his room for a couple of days and emerged with sketches of Six Violin Sonatas (Op. 27), each imagined with the sound of a specific artist ringing in his ears.

The first, second, and fourth sonatas allude both to their target violinist and to Bach’s approach to creating solo violin music. The others move away from Bach, focusing more exclusively on the violinist dedicatees. Sonata No. 3 in D minor was for George Enescu, whose approach to performing and writing music was infused with the techniques, microtonality, and structures of Romanian folk music. In his one-movement “Ballade” for Enescu, Ysaÿe refrains from directly appropriating these elements of style, and yet he does justice to his friend’s enormous flair as a player. A slow introduction explores uncanny, augmented sonorities, expressed primarily through chains of minor sixths, setting a tense and dramatic scene. Then the tempo kicks in and the violinist is off, shooting from low string to high and back down through an explosive, springing gesture. A more delicate, vaguely Baroque take on this motif occurs in the middle of the piece, but the shouting passions of the snapping rhythm soon take over once again before Ysaÿe leads us to a breathtaking close.

Cellist, writer, and music researcher Nicky Swett is a PhD candidate and Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge.