LDV77

DAVID GRIMAL 21 Ysaÿe was inspired by the general structure of Bach’s cycle: four sonatas in the minor and two in the major, the same keys to begin with and end with, etc. Do you feel that Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas, like Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, trace out a spiritual and human trajectory? The Ysaÿe cycle is shorter than the Sonatas and Partitas, and there is a great disparity in length and structure between the works. Rather than a trajectory, I would speak of a gallery of portraits of the six dedicatees of these sonatas. Each sonata is dedicated to a violinist, and each time that musician’s personality is clearly present. But an implicit portrait of Eugène Ysaÿe may also be discerned: the image of a man generous with his students, his colleagues and the composers whose music he served. The epigraphic pun that introduces the mystical journey of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas – he writes ‘Sei Solo’, ‘You are alone’, instead of ‘Sei Soli’, ‘Six solos’ – in reality raises the question of an existential solitude. But Ysaÿe does not allude to this in any way, since here we bathe in the fraternal friendships that irradiate this music.