Carolin Widmann’s Solo Album on ECM

courtesy of Crossover Media

If I am not mistaken, I have not been aware of the work of violinist Carolin Widmann since my tenure with Examiner.com when, in July of 2013, I wrote about her ECM New Series recording of Morton Feldman’s “Violin and Orchestra,” a 50-minute work that Feldman had composed in 1979. At that time I had become familiar with Widmann through two earlier ECM releases, one of a concerto by Erkki-Sven Tüür (2011) and the other devoted to the chamber music of Franz Schubert (2012). Last month ECM released her first solo album, which is, to say the least, impressively eclectic.

As might be expected, the album includes two of the “usual suspects” in the solo violin repertoire. The more familiar of these is Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1004 partita in D minor, whose concluding chaconne has a duration roughly equal to that of the four preceding movements. The other “usual suspect” is better known among violinists than among most general audiences. He is the Belgian virtuoso violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, who, in July of 1923, composed his Opus 27, a collection of six solo violin sonatas each dedicated to one of his contemporary violinists. Widmann selected the fifth of the sonatas, dedicated to one of Ysaÿe’s disciples, another Belgian violinist named Mathieu Crickboom.

By way of context, I should make it clear that I have absolutely no skills when it comes to trying to play the violin. Nevertheless, I was drawn to the Ysaÿe collection because it is one of the first CDs I encountered in beginning a library for my first player. That CD was a Nimbus Records release of Oscar Shumsky playing all six of the Ysaÿe sonatas, and I was hooked the very first time I played the album.

Sadly, the education that resulted from Shumsky’s album has not been put to very much use. Unless I am mistaken, my only contacts with Ysaÿe in performance have involved coupling the second Opus 27 sonata with Bach’s BWV 1006 solo violin partita in E major, since Ysaÿe began his sonata by quoting the opening measures of BWV 1006. I thus felt a great relief in discovering that Widmann chose not to play this game, selecting the fifth of the Opus 27 sonatas instead. From a personal point of view, the second of the two movements, entitled “Danse rustique,” has become a favorite; and I was delighted to find another violinist who acknowledged its proper place in the violin repertoire.

The other composers represented on Widmann’s new album are George Enescu (the dedicatee of the third of Ysaÿe’s sonatas) and George Benjamin. Enescu is represented by a solo violin composition entitled “Fantaisie concertante,” will the Benjamin contribution consists of three miniatures, each less than three minutes in duration. Finally, over the course of the album, Widmann plays to solo vocal line of “Spiritus sanctus vivificans vita” (the Holy Spirit gives life), one of the antiphons in the Canticles of Ecstasy collection of Hildegard von Bingen. This selection begins the album and returns as the “spacer” between Ysaÿe and Bach.

This suggests that Widmann planned this album as a “recital experience,” to be listened to in its entirety, rather than on a track-by-track basis. I find this an imaginative approach to providing a CD with an overall “program.” To be fair, however, I have to say that I would have preferred to experience this program in a recital hall, rather than through my sound system. I do not know if Widmann has ever performed in the United States; but, given her rich background, I would leap at the opportunity to listen to her present a recital here in San Francisco.