Mythes 'Trois Poèmes', Op 30 (Szymanowski) - from CDA67703 - Hyperion Records

Reviews

‘Ibragimova and Tiberghien make a winning combination, both in the sweltering sensuality of the central works and in the more conventional late-Romantic effulgence of the warm-hearted Sonata of 1909 … this repertoire should be high on the priority list of all those interested in 20th-century violin music, and it's not easy to imagine a stronger case being made for it than here’ (Gramophone)

‘[I would] recommend Alina Ibragimova with pianist Cédric Tiberghien as prime representatives of the numinous in Szymanowski's violin chamber repertoire’ (Gramophone)

‘This is a performance that shows Ibragimova's art at her remarkable best; at one moment poised, the next playing with abandon, she is one of the most expressive violinists around’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Ibragimova and Tiberghien produce beautifully characterised accounts, whether in the veiled contours of the Nocturne and the explosion of rhythmic energy that follows it in the Tarantella, or in the refined exoticism of Mythes, with its strange mixture of classical evocation and sensuous indulgence’ (The Guardian)

‘We are living in a Second Golden Age of violinists, but even in the context of Hilary Hahn, Leila Josefowitz and Julia Fischer, Alina Ibragimova is an astonishing talent … technically the playing is superb. Intonation is exceptional, and Ibragimova's timbral range—from the coarse to the silken, from the richly throbbing to the chastely disembodied—seems unlimited. The music is studded with challenges … she tosses it all off with self-confident authority … Cédric Tiberghien, with whom Ibragimova has played often, offers a real partnership rather than mere support … this is a major release’ (International Record Review)

‘Ibragimova's stunningly potent technique—the stuff of legend even in the close scrutiny of the digital age—is soon forgotten in a sensuous croon through which the more extravagantly impossible the violinistic hurdles, the more ecstatically glorious her tone becomes. Indeed, hurdles do not exist for her, and the usual descriptive and critical terms are useless, if only because they suggest comparison with other artists suddenly dwarfed by the incomparable. Such phrases as 'a tonal palette ranging from guttural coruscation to the most brilliantly glowing scintillance' simply will not do. There is a touch of the uncanny here, even a suggestion of the human voice—as of whispers, sighs, moans, wailing—in which the notes dissolve into a direct spiritual prehension. Ibragimova does not play or perform—she utterly possesses’ (Fanfare, USA)

‘The early violin sonata is especially fine, as are the little-known Paganini caprices’ (The Evening Standard)

‘The beautiful 24-year-old Russian violinist Alina Ibragimova teams with French pianist Cedric Tiberghien to prove that Szymanowski's violin music is the most impressive of his chamber music, especially the Scriabinesque Violin Sonata in D-minor Op 9. An exceptional disc’ (The Buffalo News, USA)

The three movements of Mythes Op 30 (1915) were a product of the composer’s collaboration with Kochanski, to whose wife Szymanowski inscribed them. Writing to her in 1930, he was to claim that he and Kochanski had created ‘a new … mode of expression for the violin’. Christopher Palmer has interpreted this as meaning that the wide range of playing techniques and timbres employed in Mythes is never a virtuoso end in itself, but simply an integrated means of giving rise naturally to what the composer already wished to say. Szymanowski, he states, ‘removes the element of self-consciousness from virtuosity’. Certainly the virtuosity is as refined in nature as the music itself, in that the violin and piano parts interact seamlessly, demanding great intuitive subtlety and telepathy from both players.

Pour les trois mouvements des Mythes op. 30 (1915), Szymanowski collabora avec Kochanski, à la femme duquel il les dédia. Dans une lettre de 1930 adressée à cette dernière, il déclara avoir créé avec Kochan´ski «un nouveau mode d’expression pour le violon». Et Christopher Palmer d’en déduire que, pour Szymanowski, le large éventail des techniques de jeu et des timbres employé dans Mythes n’est jamais une fin virtuose en soi, mais juste un moyen unifié de donner naissance à ce qu’il souhaitait déjà dire. Szymanowski, affirme-t-il, «ôte à la virtuosité son côté délibéré». Certes, la virtuosité est, par nature, aussi raffinée que la musique même, en ce que les parties violonistique et pianistique interagissent sans heurt, exigeant de la part des deux interprètes une bonne dose de subtilité intuitive et de télépathie.

Die drei Sätze der Mythen op. 30 (1915) waren ein Ergebnis der Zusammenarbeit des Komponisten mit Kochanski, dessen Ehefrau Szymanowski sie widmete. In einem Brief an sie aus dem Jahre 1930 erklärte er, dass er und Kochanski „eine neue Ausdrucksart für die Violine“ hervorgebracht hätten. Christopher Palmer hat dies so interpretiert, dass die große Spannweite von Spieltechniken und Timbres, die in den Mythen erforderlich sind, nie wegen der Virtuosität an sich eingesetzt wird, sondern auf eine ganzheitliche Art und Weise das verdeutlicht, was der Komponist ausdrücken wollte. Szymanowski, so erklärt er, „trennt das Element der Selbstwahrnehmung von der Virtuosität“. Natürlich ist die Virtuosität ebenso kultiviert wie die Musik selbst, insofern, als dass die Violine und Klavier nahtlos miteinander interagieren und von den Ausführenden eine intuitive Subtilität und eine geradezu telepathische Beziehung zueinander verlangen.

Recording details: July 2008
Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, United Kingdom
Produced by Andrew Keener
Engineered by David Hinitt
Release date: May 2009
Total duration: 21 minutes 2 seconds

Cover artwork: Water Nymph (detail) by Otto Theodor Gustav Lingner (1856-1917)
Private Collection / Agra Art, Warsaw / Bridgeman Images

Mythes 'Trois Poèmes', Op 30

Alina Ibragimova (violin), Cédric Tiberghien (piano)

Reviews

Introduction