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Stories   >   100 years of the Ysaye sonatas. Violinist.com interviews Hilary Hahn

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100 years of the Ysaye sonatas. Violinist.com interviews Hilary Hahn

Posted: July 10, 2023

Violinist.com's Laurie Niles writes…..Violin-playing today owes a lot to one important man of yesterday: Eugène Ysaÿe - who lived from 1858 to 1931. For one, he wrote the Six Sonatas for solo violin - beautiful and groundbreaking pieces that follow in the footsteps of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas. But also, there is the direct teaching lineage that so many people can claim to Ysaÿe, who taught Joseph Gingold, William Primrose, Matthieu Crickboom, Oscar Shumsky, Nathan Milstein, Jascha Brodsky and Louis Persinger, among others. Ysaÿe's pedagogy is connected to anyone whose teachers descend from that line, and there are a great many. (Even I can make the connection - several of my teachers were proteges of Gingold.)

Hilary Hahn has always treasured the direct musical lineage she had through her teacher at the Curtis Institute. When she realized last October that the Six Sonatas were coming up for their 100th anniversary in 2023, she felt a sudden compulsion to do something about it. "These pieces are iconic, generation-defining, and a beautiful celebration of the instrument. Could I find some way to mark their centenary?" she said. "My concert schedule was completely full. There was one other possibility, but it would be a massive undertaking: recording this opus."

That's how Hilary came to record the entire set in a creative whirlwind that lasted for the next seven weeks - recording them in chronological order, in between concert tours. That recording, Eugène Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas for Violin Solo, Op. 27, officially will be released this Friday.

Last month I spoke with Hilary about this breathtaking project, her connection to Ysaÿe, and Ysaÿe's connection to all violinists. "I've always put a lot of value in being 'one-generation-removed' from a man who was born in the 1850s and was hugely influential," Hilary said, "I take great pride in being a 'musical grandchild' of Ysaÿe."

That said, when it comes to the Sonatas, the influence a little more indirect - Hilary did not study them all with her teacher. "I taught myself all of them, except for number six," she said. "Number six, I learned while I was still a student; the rest I taught myself after graduating. So it's music that is in my soul, in my musical DNA, but I don't have particular pedagogical stories about it."

When it comes to repertoire for violinists, the Ysaÿe Sonatas are a solid part of the canon. "You learn the Bach as a younger student, and then you add the Ysaÿe for some variety, to learn some slightly different techniques," Hilary said.

It is clear that Ysaÿe was inspired by Bach's Sonatas and Partitas. "The seed of the project for him came from a performance by (Joseph) Szigeti, who was playing Bach," Hilary said. "I don't think Ysaÿe intended for it to be the series of six it became - he probably discovered more ideas and just kept writing."

The sheer audacity of Ysaÿe's Six Sonatas is part of its charm and challenge. Not everyone would take on the task of writing a follow-up to Bach's works for solo violin, but "Ysaÿe heard his colleague playing Bach and thought, 'Hmmm, this could use an update, let me modernize this. How about six-note chords on a four stringed instrument?'" Hilary laughed, "And he did it!

A composer who wasn't violinist - or who wasn't a violinist at Ysaÿe's proficiency level - simply would not have been able to find the possibilities that Ysaÿe did. "In these pieces there is an informality and also an exuberance," Hilary said. "The way he writes through the expressive freedoms - it's from a very deep knowledge of the instrument. Where other composers hit a roadblock, he sees a path. Or he just bursts right through the wall - as if saying, 'Oh, this is not made of brick, this is made of Styrofoam!'"

"So it's this niche, but super-important set of pieces for a violinist," she said.

Ysaÿe also wrote the Sonatas with particular violinists in mind - dedicating each one of them to a violinist who was his contemporary. Of course, he dedicated the first to Joseph Szigeti, who inspired the entire project. Then he dedicated the second to Jacques Thibaud, third to George Enescu, fourth to Fritz Kreisler, fifth to Mathieu Crickboom and sixth to Manuel Quiroga.

"You have a lot of inner messages in these pieces, from Ysaÿe to the dedicatee," Hilary said. "You just sense that there are stories being told, and references - to parties they were at together, or some conversation, or a concert Ysaÿe went to. The closer the dedicatee and composer were, the more personalized and sort of hidden-message-y the piece ended up being. I was really interested in all of those dynamics."     Photo by Chris Lee.

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