Sergey Khachatryan presents the first recording of Ysaÿe’s 6 Solo Sonatas, op.27, on the composer’s Guarneri del Gesù violin - a magnificent, hypnotic instrument.

Ysaÿe’s Op.27 is not new to Sergey Khachatryan, who has been performing the cycle in concert for a long time. Today, aged thirty-eight, and the precocious First Prize Winner of the International Sibelius Competition in 2000 and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2005, the Armenian violinist once more demonstrates his radiant maturity, along the same lines as he did with his sumptuous and personal recording of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas.

Here, Sergey Khachatryan delivers an interpretation of heightened feelings, where what might otherwise come across as impish is deliberately turned into something fierce (the Prélude of Sonata no.2, which uses the opening motif of Bach’s Partita no.3), or that which is merely imitative becomes wild and relentless (the Finale of Sonata no.4).

He wilfully emphasises the popular inspiration underlying the complete collection, replete with shadings and a sumptuousness previously unheard.

The personality of the Cantor of Leipzig obsessed the great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931). The collection of six Sonatas for unaccompanied violin that he composed in July 1923, after the legendary concerts in which Joseph Szigeti played Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, was intended as both an homage and an affirmation, in six stages, of the evolution of violin technique since the eighteenth century.

For the performer, they present a different challenge, just as innovative and eloquent as that of the Sonatas and Partitas. Just like Bach two centuries before, Ysaÿe pushes the instrument to its very limits, demanding an utterly reliable virtuosity, and a supple, flexible technique.

In embarking upon these six Sonatas, each dedicated to a great solo violinist colleague and/or friend of Ysaÿe (for instance, Szigeti for the First, Thibaud for the Second, Fritz Kreisler for the Fourth, and so on), today’s performers are also able to understand the composer’s own exceptional violin playing.

Ysaÿe explained that each of these six sonatas “are rooted in polyphony. Rendering two, three, four, five and sometimes six sounds simultaneously requires skilful tuning, arpeggiating, double, triple and even quadruple stopping. All put to the service of a free-ranging, imaginative, and, let us say the word, rhapsodic musical thinking.”