Rêves - Ysaÿe: Violin Concerto in E Minor, Poème Concertant Philippe Graffin

• Eugène Ysaÿe (1858 - 1931): Poème Concertant (orch. Erika Vega):
• 1Ysaÿe: Poème Concertant (orch. Erika Vega)22:58
• Violin Concerto in E Minor:
• 2Ysaÿe: Violin Concerto in E Minor: I. Allegro appassionato non troppo vivo15:21
• 3Ysaÿe: Violin Concerto in E Minor: II. Andante07:49
• 4Ysaÿe: Violin Concerto in E Minor: III. Allegro in modo di pomposo ma furioso12:23
• 2 Mazurkas de Salon, Op. 10:
• 5Ysaÿe: 2 Mazurkas de Salon, Op. 10: No. 1, (Dans le lontain)04:25
• 6Ysaÿe: 2 Mazurkas de Salon, Op. 10: No. 2, Mazurka04:19
• Rêve d’enfant, Op. 14:
• 7Ysaÿe: Rêve d’enfant, Op. 1404:12
• Total Runtime01:11:27

Info for Rêves - Ysaÿe: Violin Concerto in E Minor, Poème Concertant

The world-premiere recording of the complete Violin Concerto in E Minor by Belgian virtuoso violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe has arrived! Following the recent discovery of a first movement, further manuscripts which complete the work have come to light – one a full orchestration, others for violin and piano – which were found on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Philippe Graffin’s close collaboration with Ysaÿe aficionado Xavier Falques led to a page-by-page analysis and painstaking reconstruction of the musical puzzle pieces, resulting in this recording of the full, three-movement concerto which displays Ysaÿe’s trademark ardour, intensity and originality.

For reasons unknown, Ysaÿe abandoned his Violin Concerto in E minor in 1885, but some years later embarked on another, Poème concertant, which was also recently discovered in manuscript form and is imbued with passion and the love Ysaÿe felt for his pupil Irma Sethe. Their love was mutual but their relationship could not endure, possibly sealing the fate of Poème concertant which lay undiscovered for over a century but is now brought back to life with this world-premiere recording.

Philippe rounds out the recording with three Ysaÿe gems for violin and piano: 2 Mazurkas de Salon, Op.10, works the violinist / composer frequently performed and gained popularity throughout Europe and Russia in his lifetime; and Rêve d’enfant (“A child’s dream”), which he dedicated to his youngest son Antoine.

Philippe Graffin, violin
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Jean-Jacques Kantorow, conductor
Marisa Gupta, piano

Philippe Graffin
began learning the violin with his father, a jazz musician and sculptor. He entered the Marseille Conservatoire, followed by the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 13 in the class of Michèle Auclair. Upon graduating he studied in Bloomington, Indiana, with Josef Gingold, a pupil of Ysaÿe.

Philippe was a laureate of the Fritz Kreisler competition in Austria, where upon hearing him Sir Yehudi Menuhin invited him to make his first recording under his baton.

Graffin’s many highly acclaimed recordings since then bear witness to an ever-questing mind and include many world premieres. He has rediscovered original settings of Chausson’s Poème with string quartet and has championed the forgotten Violin Concertos of Fauré, the pre-Kreisler version of Elgar’s Violin Concerto and the Violin Concerto by English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the world-premiere recording of which he released on AVIE records and performed at the BBC Proms. He has also recorded the world premiere of Ysaÿe’s Solo Sonata Op.27bis, included in his recital with pianist Claire Désert, Fiddler’s Blues, also on AVIE Records.

As a soloist, he has performed with some of the foremost orchestras in Europe: The Philharmonia, BBC Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken, the Residentie Orkest, Gothenburg Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, St Petersburg Philharmonic, George Enescu Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Orchestre national d’Île-de-France.

Graffin has had works written for him by Rodion Shchedrin, Vytautas Barkauskas, David Matthews, Philippe Hersant, Yves Prin, Peter Fribbins, Nicola Campogrande and Marcelo Nisinman.

Philippe was the founder and artistic director of ‘Consonances’, a chamber music festival held in St Nazaire, France. He has curated numerous projects at London’s Wigmore Hall, including a week-long festival devoted to Ysaÿe and his influences. Philippe has shared the stage with some of the great artistic personalities of our time, from Lord Menuhin and Mstislav Rostropovich to the actor Gérard Depardieu, with whom he created a project in Brussels, at Flagey, exploring the relationship between poetry and music, recorded and documented by Belgian Television RTBF.

Philippe Graffin is a professor at Paris’s Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique (CNSM) and at the Royal Conservatoire of Brussels (KCB).

Booklet for Rêves - Ysaÿe: Violin Concerto in E Minor, Poème Concertant