Ysaÿe: Sonata no 1 for solo violin

Day 218

Ysaÿe: Sonata no 1 for solo violin

Hilary Hahn

Ysaÿe’s set of 6 sonatas for solo violin are generally considered to be the most important contributions to the solo violin repertoire since Bach’s sonatas and partitas. Each of them is dedicated to a particular violinist and is meant in some way to reflect that violinists style and musical inspiration. The first of them, which is the one which I chose, is dedicated to Szegeti, The spirit of Bach is everywhere in this 4-movement piece - though Bach would no doubt have been astonished both by the harmonic idiom and the technical demands placed on the soloists. As a wind player who only ever has to play one note at a time (I’ve never got into multiphonics) is is jaw dropping to hear what one player can produce. The composer is quite happy to write chords in four and even six parts and elaborate contrapuntal passages which if you heard the piece cold you would swear were being played by at least two violinists.

So as a feat of compositional technique this was highly inventive music - and the performance by Hilary Hahn was superb: the question remains as to the value of this piece in purely musical terms. Is there enough to engage the attention once you have got past the technical wizardry? I’m not sure. There were moments, particularly in the 3rd movement, where I thought that there was genuine musical invention that worked on its own terms, but I didn’t feel that all the way through. Still Bach’s solo violin music tends to be quite slow to give up its secrets so perhaps this sonata does need a further hearing.