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Track(s) taken from CDA67703

Lullaby 'La Berceuse d'Aïtacho Enia', Op 52

composer
1925

Alina Ibragimova (violin), Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Recording details: July 2008
Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, United Kingdom
Produced by Andrew Keener
Engineered by David Hinitt
Release date: May 2009
Total duration: 3 minutes 56 seconds

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

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)
Jim Samson has noted how Szymanowski’s voice in this slightly later period took on a ‘stark linear quality’, and the simplicity of momentum in the Berceuse Op 52 (1925) offers a striking contrast, even if that might be expected in a work bearing this title. The tonal disjunction between violin and piano in the opening measures suggests two personalities pushed apart into their separate worlds by some nameless grief, and despite some textural expansion in the central stages the piece preserves an ashen and disconsolate air that is both unsettling and affecting—perhaps reminiscent in a fortuitous way of the post-War new radicalism of Frank Bridge’s second piano trio or third and fourth string quartets.

from notes by Francis Pott © 2009

Jim Samson a souligné combien la langue de Szymanowski avait revêtu, en cette période un peu plus tardive, une «austère linéarité», et la simplicité de l’élan, dans la Berceuse op. 52 (1925), offre un contraste saisissant—ce qui n’a peut-être rien de surprenant dans une œuvre portant ce titre. La disjonction tonale entre le violon et le piano, dans les mesures initiales, évoque deux personnalités poussées chacune dans leur univers par quelque chagrin indéfini et, malgré une texture plus développée dans les épisodes centraux, la pièce conserve un air blême et inconsolable tout à la fois touchant et troublant—rappel, peut-être fortuit, du nouveau radicalisme d’après-guerre du deuxième trio avec piano ou des quatuors à cordes nos 3 et 4 de Frank Bridge.

extrait des notes rédigées par Francis Pott © 2009
Français: Hypérion

Jim Samson hat festgestellt, dass Szymanowskis Stil in dieser etwas späteren Periode „steifer und geradliniger“ wurde. Doch steht die Schlichtheit der Eigendynamik in der Berceuse op. 52 (1925) im starken Kontrast dazu, obwohl man das natürlich von einem Werk mit diesem Titel auch erwarten kann. Die tonale Trennung zwischen Violine und Klavier in den Anfangstakten deutet auf zwei Persönlichkeiten hin, die durch eine unbekannte Trauer auseinandergetrieben worden sind und sich nun in ihren jeweiligen Welten aufhalten. Trotz der strukturellen Ausdehnung im Mittelteil des Stückes bleibt eine trostlose und aschfahle Stimmung zurück, was eine ebenso beunruhigende wie anrührende Wirkung hat—und möglicherweise zufällig an den Nachkriegsradikalismus von Frank Bridges 2. Klaviertrio oder auch 3. und 4. Streichquartett erinnert.

aus dem Begleittext von Francis Pott © 2009
Deutsch: Viola Scheffel

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