Kryptos Quartet - Ysaÿe: Chamber Music for Strings (VRT Muziek Edition) (2011/2024) [Official Digital Download]

Many of Ysaÿe’s works exist only in manuscript or were not published for many years. This CD presents some premieres from the collection of his compositions in the Royal Library of Brussels. All the members of the Kryptos Quartet are graduates of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and are united by their passion for chamber music.

For a long time the fame of Eugène Ysaÿe as a composer was overshadowed by his fame as a performing musician.

Ysaÿe was the most renowned violin virtuoso of his generation. Already in the 1890s, when he was a young man in his thirties, he was pivotal in advocating contemporary French and Belgian music. César Franck gave him his Violin Sonata (1886) as a wedding gift; Claude Debussy wrote his String Quartet (1893) for the Ysaÿe Quartet and the wellknown Poème (1897) by Ernest Chausson is dedicated to Eugène Ysaÿe. Chausson modelled this Poème on an early composition by Ysaÿe himself: the Poème Elégiaque for violin and orchestra from 1895, which Ysaÿe had dedicated to Gabriel Fauré. It was quite common for a musician such as Eugène Ysaÿe to compose as well. A ‘berceuse’, ‘valse’ or rêve d’enfant’ by the musician himself always went down well at recitals of a great violin virtuoso. However, Ysaÿe did not only compose salon pieces; he also wrote violin concertos, symphonic poems and chamber music. And later, in 1923, he wrote his legendary Six Sonatas for Solo Violin, a musical heritage for the generations to come: they are the violinists’ equivalent to the Six Cello Suites by Bach. Ysaÿe’s work is not always easy to track down. Many compositions only exist in manuscript or they were not published until years later, sometimes in adapted versions. His son Antoine Ysaÿe and later his grandson Jacques Ysaÿe took care of the musical heritage and publications. Today the collection is located in the Royal Library of Brussels. This CD presents some premieres from this collection.

"Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe is known first and foremost as being one of the preeminent violin virtuosos of his time. His numerous works for his own instruments – from charming miniatures to the violin concerto and the set of sonatas for solo violin – have become an increasingly integral part of the modern violin repertoire. What is less known is that Ysaÿe's compositional output was not limited to works for his own instrument. Found on this Klara album are four chamber works that are rarely, if ever, heard. Two of the works – the String Quartet London and the Paganini Variations for string quartet – are in fact arrangements of other chamber works created by Ysaÿe's grandson, Jacques Ysaÿe. The two works for string quintet (incorporating two violas) are original. Performing these sometimes mesmerizing, sometimes nebulous works is the Kryptos Quartet along with second violist Vlad Bogdanas. Ysaÿe's chamber music writing is as sophisticated and intricate as his violin works. The young members of Kryptos put forth a noble effort to be the first to record some of these pieces, but they seem to struggle to deliver a comprehensible, unified musical vision to their listeners. There are no breaks or track separations, yielding four massive tracks of almost continuous playing that lacks sufficient delineation when the music moves from one idea to the next. What's more, Kryptos doesn't have the polished, refined chops – particularly in the intonation department – to really put forward an authoritative reading of these curious works." (Mike D. Brownell, AMG)

Tracklist:
01. String Quintet in B Minor for 2 violins, 2 altos and cello (VRT Muziek Edition)
02. String Quartet London (VRT Muziek Edition)
03. Andante in B Minor for 2 violins, 2 altos and cello (VRT Muziek Edition)
04. Paganini Variations for String Quartet (VRT Muziek Edition)


Thanks to the Original customer!