Claude Debussy: Sonate für Violine und Klavier G-Moll
Franz Schubert: Fantasie in C für Violine und Klavier D 934
op. post.159
Béla Bartók: Erste Rhapsodie (1928) (Volkstänze)
Jörg Widmann: Etüde V für Solovioline
(Hommage a Niccolò Paganini, Caprice No.VI)
Astor Piazzolla: Le Grand Tango
Sinn Yang, Violine
Marco Grisanti, Klavier · Harald Oeler, Akkordeon
The music competition tendered by the “Kulturkreis
der deutschen Wirtschaft” supports young musical
talents who are also able to present their programmes
in well-chosen words. Accordingly, in addition to the
purely instrumental skills, the council takes the intellectual
analysis of the works into account as well as
the musician’s ability to convey their thoughts to the
audience when it comes to taking the decision on the
winners. This procedure guarantees a high standard as
well as extraordinary, manifest programmes that offer
a new perspective on the repertoire of each individual
instrument.
Violinist Sinn Yang completed her studies with
Max Speermann in Würzburg and Thomas Brandis
in Lübeck. For her debut CD, she not only chose
to select a pianist but also an accordion player who
plays Piazzolla’s “Le Grand Tango” with her. Jörg
Widmann’s etude for solo violin no. 5 serves to bring
the previous etudes 1–4 spanning a wide musical arch
to a great conclusion.
Sinn Yang talks about
this recording
My debut CD is a multi-faceted portrait
of me as a violinist and musician.
I perform with piano and accordion as
well as alone, having been granted the honor
of premiering Jörg Widmann’s solo composition
for violin, Étude V, both in concert and
on this recording. It was easy for me to select
the works heard here both because I have
long been fascinated with each piece and
because it is important to me to express the
individual character of each piece.
The CD begins with French impressionism
and Claude Debussy’s Sonata for Violin,
written in 1917. He had been inspired by a
gypsy violinist in Hungary, saying about
him: “[He was] a man who could coax secrets
from a vault.” This is the last work in a series
of six planned sonatas for various instrumental
combinations. Debussy was only able to
complete three of them before dying.
One can truly call this work mysterious.
The theme is simple: a G Minor triad that
falls twice, but which is surprisingly illuminated
by the piano in C Major upon its
second descent. As in Monet’s impressionist
pictures “Cathedrale de Rouen”, in which
the artist painted the cathedral in the varying
light of different times of day, Debussy
illuminates his theme in a number of ways.
A number of original images have come
down to us from the famous violinist Joseph
Calvet, who performed this sonata for the
composer himself. In the second movement,
a trill illustrates a water fountain that falls
from on high and seethes in the pool below.
A saxophone is imitated in the third movement
by a glissando motive. Later, a bursting
bubble of mud is depicted by a sudden
upwards glissando of a sixth.
Franz Schubert’s Fantasie in C Major for
violin and piano is an outstanding chamber
musical work, written one year before the
composer’s death in 1827. Formally – assuming
the three-part sonata form as the conventional
standard – the work is so free and
unusual, almost aimless, that the reviewer
of the Leipziger Allgemeine Musikzeitung
wrote after the work’s premiere on January
20, 1828: “One could reasonably come to the
conclusion that the popular composer has been
misguided”.
The tripartite structure of the movement
is due to a central variation section that is preceded
by a free introduction and a contrasting
Allegretto and followed by a reminiscence of
the introductory section. A turbulent stretta
closes the work. For the theme of his variations,
Schubert quotes his own Lied to a text
by Rückert, “Sei mir gegrüsst”. This text begins
with the exclamation: “O you who have been
snatched from me and my kiss”.
This idea conveys the emotional condition
of the unhappy protagonist. The central
recurring figure is found in the closing formula,
“I greet you, I kiss you”. The melodic
rise to the dominant at “I greet you” awakens
expectations that the abrupt chromatic modulation
at “I kiss you” proves as unrealizable.
The song is an unending circling of hope
and non-fulfillment. The echo effect of the
last words “I kiss you” seems to be an answer
from a fantasy-world that only strengthens
the feeling of painful loss. Schubert omits
the romantic reconciliation found in the
song, “A breath of love erases space and time,
I am with you, you are with me”, from the
Fantasie.
I n his essay “Schubert”, Adorno writes,
“Faced by Schubert’s music, tears fill the eyes
even before they ask the soul.” The last quote
from the song emerges out of nowhere after
the third movement, “Allegro vivace”, shortly
before the last finale. It is heralded by a colossal
and abrupt modulation from C Major to
A-flat Major. This suddenness gives the song
something timeless, something eternal; in
fact, the theme continues to be spun out with
the flowing movement in the piano from Aflat
Major back to the unavoidable C Major,
until the supposedly never-ending song suddenly
falls silent in a rest, as though it had
died. The last virtuosic and overexcited flurry
in C Major ends this enigmatic composition
and calls everything into question.
Jörg Widman
Jörg Widmann’s “Étude V” was comissioned
by the Cultural Comittee of German Business.
It forms the continuation of the previous
violin etudes numbers I-IV. The “Étude V”
begins in the stratospheric heights where the
previous etude closed. The subtitle of Widmann’s
piece is “Hommage à Paganini”, and
refers to the latter’s slow (!) 6 th Trill Caprice.
In this piece, virtuosity is subordinate to the
slow flow of the music. Widmann finds it the
deepest and most substantial of Paganini’s
Caprices. His Étude V is a fantastic sound fantasia
that consciously reaches for the extreme
boundaries of the possible – both in terms of
violin technique and of emotions. Beginning
as an homage on Paganini, the work reveals
itself towards the end to be ever more a violin
composition in the spirit of Bach. It ends on
a long ‘D’, the central tone of Bach’s famous
Chaconne. It was the composer’s wish that
this work be recorded in a church due to the
special acoustics of such a setting. This was
realized at the premiere in the Neubaukirche
in Würzburg.
Béla Bartók
First Rhapsody was written in 1928 for the
Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti, who was
Bartók’s musical partner for many years. Lassu-
Friss (slow-fast) is the typical form of the
Hungarian national dance, the czardas. The
prominent dotted first theme with a dronelike
accompaniment contrasts sharply with
the calm, lullaby-like middle section. The
first movement ends with a brusk return to
the first theme. The following “Friss” begins
with a folkloristic dance melody that works
itself into an intoxicatingly impetuous dance
with fast rhythm changes and a wealth of
colors. Based on the original recording of
Bartók and Szigeti from 1940, I perform the
alternative second ending.
Astor Piazolla
Written in 1982, Le Grand Tango illustrates
the original Argentine tango. The harmony,
however, is much more complex, almost contemporary,
supported by the foundation of
the basic 3+3+2 tango rhythm. The accordion,
an instrument of the present with colors
that are related to the bandoneon, makes a
major contribution to the “old” and “new”
aspects of this composition. In the interplay
with the violin, Piazzolla’s Grand Tango has
both orchestral as well as intimate chambermusical
moments, which enables an astonishing
spectrum of possibilities for interpreting
the tango.
Translation: Elizabeth Gahbler
MARCO GRISANTI, piano
Marco Grisanti was born in Rome in
1965. After beginning his studies with
the pianist Maja Samargieva he received his
diploma with the highest grade “cum laude”
at Saint Cecily Conservatory in Rome; at the
same time he attended the composition class
of Nazario Bellandi. Later he perfected these
studies with Fausto Zadra and Eduardo Hubert;
at the same time he specialized in chamber
music been taught by Riccardo Brengola
and Felix Ayo at Saint Cecily National Academy
of Music in Rome. Finally, he became
assistent respectively concert
partner of both
artists. At Chigiana Academy of Siena he was
first student and then the only pianist assistant
of Uto Ughi with whom Marco Grisanti
often plays at important Italian festivals.
Marco Grisanti now teaches Chamber Music
and Piano Accompaniment/Correpetitor at
State Music Conservatory in Campobasso.
Thanks to his twenty years of concert experience
as chamber music performer Marco
Grisanti has a repertoire of over three hundred
pieces which he has played with famous
artist such as the American Brass Quintet,
the Beethoven Quartet, Wolfgang Boettcher,
Vincenzo Bolognese, Michinori Bunja, Lenuta
Ciulei, Miriam Fried, Benoit Fromager,
Franco Maggio-Ormezovsky, Vincenzo
Mariozzi, Domenico Nordio, Emmanuel
Pahud, Angelo Persichilli, Residenz-Quartet
Würzburg, Sayaka Shoji, Chicashi Tanaka
and Constantin Zanidache. At the Saint
Cecily National Academy of Music he has
been collaborating with Norbert Balatsch,
Martino Faggiani, Angelo Persichilli, Reiner
Schmidt etc., for many years, for instance at
master classes. Concerts led him to Argentina,
Germany, France, Greece, Ireland, Japan,
Canada, Austria, Spain and the U.S.A. Many
performances at the most important Italian
National channels Radio and TV (RAI).
He prefers chamber music by Beethoven
and Brahms, but his repertoire comprises a
broad scope of composers, styles as well as
epochs and ranges from instrumental duos to
song and choir compositions.
Harald Oeler, accordion
Harald Oeler was born in 1977 in Bietigheim-
Bissingen, Germany. After completing
his diploma in music with honors
and top mark, he continued his studies in
Stefan Hussong’s master class as well as with
Christine Schneider in the jazz department
of the Academy for Music in Würzburg.
Harald Oeler has won numerous prizes
in national and international competitions,
including Third Prize at the 3rd International
Accordion Competition JAA in Tokyo, Japan
in 2002. He is the first German participant
ever to win Second Prize at the International
Accordion Competition in Arrasate, Spain in
2007. In 2008, his accordion duo Animé won
First Prize at the 45th International Accordion
Competition Klingenthal. In October 2008,
he was awarded with the “Bayerischer Kulturpreis”.
Harald Oeler has already worked with
Frank Ollu, Annette von Hehn, Thomas
Hoppe, Stefan Heinemeyer, Michael T. Otto
and actors Eva Mattes, Susanne Lothar and
Oliver Urbanski.
He was a scholarship recipient of the Studienstiftung
des deutschen Volkes as well as
the “Live Music Now” program founded by
Lord Yehudi Menuhin.
Harald Oeler has performed in several
projects and festivals such as the Heidelberger
Frühling, Literaturfest Niedersachsen,
Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker, Klangkörper
Schweiz EXPO 2000, as well as many
jazz festivals. Recordings of his concerts have
been made by nearly all German broadcasts
and for TV.
Harald Oeler has received a great deal of
attention in radio and specialized press since
the releases of his solo debut CD “Pictures at
an Exhibition” and “Stubenjazz”.
