Works for Solo Violin: Bartók - Prokofiev - Ysaÿe

The blurb for this new recital from the estimable German violinist Franziska Pietsch says that the solo violin sonatas by Bartók and Ysaÿe were the most important works in the genre since Bach. No one would seriously dispute this claim, I imagine, but the two composers worked at different levels, Bartók consciously writing with the serious concentration of Bach, Ysaÿe in the tradition of brilliant virtuosity exemplified by the Paganini Caprices. Pietsch was probably wise to separate them with the easy-going, accessible Prokofiev Solo Sonata, because Bartók created an intense, thorny piece that often assaults the ear aggressively; you need to decompress before enjoying the three-ring circus presented by Ysaÿe, which isn’t to deny the charm and musicality that’s also present.

The first recording of the Bartók to come my way as a reviewer (in Fanfare 38:3) was by the superb Hungarian violinist Barnabás Kelemen on Hungaroton. He captures every facet of a rich, dense, extremely varied score. Comparing the piece with the two violin-and-piano sonatas, I wrote, “Perhaps the most difficult is the Sonata for Solo Violin commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin in 1944. The dying Bartók set himself the challenge of updating Bach in an uncompromising modernist idiom. The entry point here is formal, because we get a Bach-like Chaconne and Fuga in the first two movements, followed by a slow Melodia and a virtuosic Presto finale.”

Some performers, notably Christian Tetzlaff, smooth out the sonata’s aggressiveness, while others, like Vilde Frang, go for broke. Either way, the listener has to brace himself. Bartók employs the violin’s capacity to scrape, scratch, and wail more often than its capacity for song. Pietsch vies with Frang’s take-no-prisoners approach, underlining the work’s tonal extremes to an abrasive degree, risking more screech and scratch than I am comfortable with. Musically, however, she lacks Tetzlaff’s wonderful ability to give us a sense of wholeness in Bartók’s conception—the music shouldn’t be all noise and chaos. I also admire how Tetzlaff adds warmth to the lyric passages that crop up here and there, so despite her obvious skill and commitment, Pietsch’s reading wouldn’t be among my top choices. It should appeal, however, to anyone who wants an explosive performance of an astonishing work.

I admired Pietsch’s recording of the two Prokofiev Violin Concertos and the two sonatas with piano. She’s equally sympathetic in his late Solo Violin Sonata in D from 1947. By then Prokofiev’s inspiration was declining along with his health, but the solo sonata is agreeably tuneful, nimble, and upbeat. The work was commissioned by the Soviet music system as a teaching piece, so it is not technically very difficult. It was originally designed to be played by an ensemble of talented students rather than as a solo work. Pietsch’s reading is less pointed and intense than, say, Viktoria Mullova’s (Onyx), but it doesn’t suffer by comparison, being lyrical and appealing in its own right.

Ysaÿe’s Six Solo Violin Sonatas, gathered as his op. 27 in 1923, are beloved by virtuosos, giving them scope for brilliance and Romanticism to the utmost. In the second sonata of the group, dedicated to Jacques Thibaud, the “obsession” of the subtitle refers to Thibaud’s love of Bach and his habit of including the opening Preludio of Partita No. 3 in his morning practice sessions. Just as obsessive, however, is the contrasting use of the Gregorian Dies irae that captured the ear of many composers, most notably Liszt and Rachmaninoff. The juxtaposition of the two borrowings is incongruous but quite entertaining.

In the last issue Robert Maxham was enthusiastic about a performance from Maïté Louis (Continuo), who highlights the stark contrasts in Ysaÿe’s quotations. She maintains a beautiful, consistent tone as well and focuses on Romantic expression to an enticing degree. I’d say that Pietsch goes one better in expressing both the moods and contrasts in the piece. She has an air of personal involvement that’s captivating. The combination of excitement and presence makes this a memorable reading in all four movements, whether Ysaÿe is being misterioso or theatrical.

The program ends with Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 3, “Ballade,” dedicated to Georges Enescu. Its single movement is in two sections, the first being lyrical and passionate, with almost continuous double- and triple-stops, the second, marked con bravura, moving into brilliant passagework without letting up on the double-stops. Pietsch gives an account as charismatic and captivating as in the previous sonata, which makes the Ysaÿe portion of the disc very compelling.

There’s always something of absorbing value in every release I’ve heard from this artist, and even if Pietsch’s Bartók frayed my nerves, that’s a personal reaction. On every other count this disc, which has excellent recorded sound, is strongly recommended.

This is the fourth recording by German violinist Franziska Pietsch that I have had the pleasure to review. The earlier ones were the Grieg Violin Sonatas (J/F 2016), the Franck Violin Sonata and Szymanowski’s Myths and Romance (S/O 2017), and the Prokofieff Violin Sonatas and Five Melodies (N/D 2016). In those, she showed that she is a charismatic performer with her own ideas about the music. She doesn’t just regurgitate the interpretations fed to her by her teachers. I noticed her enchanting way with passages at low dynamic levels and was bowled over by her superb Prokofieff disc, so I was very excited to get this disc to review when I noticed the Prokofieff Solo Violin Sonata in the program. This sonata, the Bartok Solo Violin Sonata, and the Six Solo Violin Sonatas by Eugene Ysaye are, I believe, the finest works in that genre produced since 1900 (sorry, Reger and Hindemith).

My excitement turned to disappointment when I listened. I noticed that she wasn’t able to sustain the long lines of the Franck Sonata, and here she fails to elucidate the architecture of the Bartok. It is a very classical work in its emphasis on form, and she doesn’t make the work’s structure her first priority, opting instead to use varying tone colors in an attempt to give the piece episodic interest. This does not do the piece justice, in spite of the fact that Bartok was a great colorist, especially in his writing for strings. It fragments the work. Robert Mann’s recording (J/A 2003) is the most effective at making the form of the piece plain, and Pietsch and everyone else would do well to listen to it. On top of this, she decided not to play Bartok’s original quarter tones in the finale, which I believe ruins the buzzing house fly-like character of those passages.

I was surprised to hear Pietsch failing to bring out the simple lyricism of the Prokofieff. Again, her interpretation is episodic and fails to knit these three brief movements together. I expected that she would finally feel sympathy for the two Ysaye sonatas; they are the most volatile and episodic works here and demand a broad range of moods and colors from the performer. Again, she is more interested in surface effects than in getting to the heart of the music, especially in the deeply felt Sonata 2, which is a character portrait of the great French violinist Jacques Thibaud.

These are the weakest performances I have heard from her. She relies on her personality instead of her intellect to sustain the music, but it can’t. Great music must be met on its own terms and cannot be reduced to a medium for the display of virtuosity and temperament. I had always found Pietsch’s manner very appealing, but it hinders rather than helps these performances. The violin was made in 1751 by the Milanese violin maker Carlo Antonio Testore.

Es ist mutig, ein Album ausschließlich mit Sonaten für Violine solo vorzulegen, stehen diese Werke doch zumeist ein wenig im Schatten der klangvolleren Arbeiten für Violine und Klavier. Doch wenn diese Solosonaten so engagiert und ausdrucksstark vorgetragen werden wie hier von Franziska Pietsch, dann hat sich dieser Mut gelohnt. Pietsch, die noch in der DDR als Wunderkind Karriere machte und seitdem vorwiegend als Konzertmeisterin und Solistin arbeitet, konzentriert sich dabei auf Arbeiten der Spätromantik und der frühen Moderne.

Béla Bartóks Sonate für Violine solo gehört unbestritten zu den größten Meisterwerken der Literatur für dieses Instrument. Entstanden 1944 im New Yorker Exil für Yehudi Menuhin, verweist das Werk bereits in seiner Anlage mit einer großen Chaconne als Kopfsatz, gefolgt von einer Fuge, auf die Sonaten für Solo-Violine Johann Sebastian Bachs. Im ersten Satz wirkt die Interpretation Pietschs sehr expressiv, mitunter sogar aggressiv und mit großen dynamischen Kontrasten. Dabei gelingen ihr vor allem die polyfonen Passagen äußerst eindrucksvoll, während die lyrischen Abschnitte manchmal etwas unterkühlt wirken. Kraftvoll und emotional packend dagegen ihre Version der Fuge, zart und einfühlsam das zentrale liedhaft-melancholische Adagio.

Ohne diese Bedeutungstiefe kommt die Solosonate von Sergej Prokofjew daher. Das liegt vermutlich daran, dass sie ursprünglich als Übungsstück für Geigenstudenten gedacht war. Es ist ein heiteres, unkompliziertes Werk. Man hört Franziska Pietsch die Freude an, mit der sie sich dieser Musik annimmt. Da wird jede melodische Phrase ausgekostet, jeder kompositorische Einfall zelebriert. Sätze aus den Solo-Sonaten Eugène Ysaÿes sind heute meist nur noch als Zugaben zu hören. Dass sich eine intensivere Beschäftigung mit diesen Werken lohnt, stellt Pietsch hier eindrucksvoll unter Beweis.

Wann immer Franziska Pietsch eine neue CD vorlegt, sei es als Solistin mit Orchester, mit ihren Streicherkolleginnen im ‘Trio Lirico’, bei Sonaten mit Pianist oder wie jetzt wieder als Solistin mit Werken für die Violine allein, darf man sicher sein, dass sie wieder eine beeindruckende Aufnahme zustande bringt. Und das drückt sich dann auch in immer sehr guten Bewertungen aus. Zu dem erfolgreichen Abschneiden trägt natürlich auch das Label Audite mit technisch hochwertig aufbereiteten Einspielungen bei.

Die Geigerin, deren Lebenslauf einen Bruch durch die politischen und dadurch ausgelösten familiären Umstände in der DDR hat, nimmt sich die Solowerke der beiden Komponisten in der Nachfolge der Kompositionen für die Violine solo von Johann Sebastian Bach vor, also Bartok und Ysaÿe. Als Brücke zwischen beiden Komponisten hat sie die Solosonate von Sergei Prokofiev gesetzt.

Wiederum findet sie auf der Basis ihrer technischen Meisterschaft einen persönlichen, die emotionalen Tiefen der jeweiligen Kompositionen auslotenden Zugang. Man mag vermuten, dass die erzwungene Unterbrechung der Entwicklung in der Jugend anfänglich ein Schock war, dass sich aber aus dieser Zeit der Besinnung eine besondere Sicht auf die Welt, vor allem die der Musik ergeben hat, die darauf Einfluss hat, dass ihre Interpretationen virtuoses Äußeres beiseiteschieben und sich ganz dem Zugang zur Musik widmen.
Violinist Franziska Pietsch’s account of solo works by Bartok, Ysaÿe, and Prokofiev is technically masterful, and very personal in its emotional depth.

Franziska Pietsch truly takes ownership of Bartók’s Solo Sonata. Her interpretation is prompted by the idea of his ‘explosive seriousness’, a notion that fans the flames of her performance, especially in the opening Chaconne and the Fugue that follows, where the voicing has an orchestral dynamism about it. The Chaconne leavens anger with moments of profound repose, always spinning the illusion that this isn’t Bartók’s music but Pietsch’s own, that we just happened to walk in while she was in the throes of spontaneous creation. That’s the effect but the truth is rather more subtle, a carefully wrought structure that’s never jemmied out of shape. The Melodia is beautifully phrased; the closing Presto a frenzied will o’-the-wisp where the quarter-tones are an integrated part of the narrative. So often they sound accidental rather than colouristic.

It’s fair to say that Bartók’s Sonata is the principal draw here but the second of Ysaÿe’s Solo Sonatas (dedicated to the great French violinist Jacques Thibaud) is also a work to reckon with, its opening ‘Obsession’ toying with Bach’s E major Prelude (Solo Partita No 3) while ghosting the ‘Dies irae’ chant, which dominates the rest of the piece. Again the cut and thrust of Pietsch’s playing makes a big impression, while the Bachian axis is nearly as evident in the single-movement Third Sonata, dedicated to that pre-eminent Bachian Georges Enescu. Here passion takes the upper hand and Pietsch never stints in that respect, nor in her masterful handling of chords.

Perhaps the lightest work on the programme is Prokofiev’s Solo Sonata which, as Norbert Hornig tells us in his useful booklet note, was composed in 1947 as an exercise in unison-playing for violin students. Of especial note is the folky third movement, where Pietsch focuses the spirit to perfection. Audite’s sound quality is extremely realistic so if the programme appeals, I wouldn’t hesitate. If it’s just the Bartók Sonata in digital sound you’re after then Pietsch is up there with Kelemen (Hungaroton, 5/13) and Ehnes (Chandos, 1/13), maybe even marginally more outspoken than either.