Yuki Shibata Violin Recital

September 30th, Saturday Yuki Shibata Violin Recital <Bach and Ysaÿe>

The hall opens at 14:30 and the concert will start at 15:00

La sonate no1,est dédiée à Joseph Szigeti.

1．Grave 2．Fugato 3．Allegretto poco scherzoso 4.Finale;Conbrio

La sonate No2, est dédiée à Jacques Thibaud.

1.Obsession;Prélude 2.Malinconia 3.Danse des Ombres;Sarabande

4.Les furies

La sonate No3,[Ballade]est dédiée à Georges Enesco

La sonate No4, est dédiée à Fritz Kreisler

1. Allemanda 2.Sarabande 3.Finale

La sonate No5,est dédiée à Mathieu Crickboom

1.L'Aurore 2.Danse rustique

La sonate No6 est dédiée à Manuel Quiroga

1．Allegro giusto non troppo vivo

Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe (1858-1931) is a Belgian distinguished violinist. He loved J.S.Bach. One day he was so deeply impressed to hear Joseph Szigeti play Bach's "Sonatas and partitas for solo violin", that he was motivated to composed his own Sonatas for solo violin. The rough sketches for 6 sonatas are reported to finished in one night, in 1924, about two hundred years after J.S.Bach's accomplishment of his "Sonatas and partitas for solo violin".

This is perfect evidence that Bach' music work so influential over centuries. J.S.Bach is now regarded as a great composer, however, looking back the history behind, he was not remembered well after his death. The Mathew's Passion, for example was first performed by Bach's conducting in 1727, but it had to wait for another hundred years to be heard by people till Felix Mendelssohn found the manuscript and performed, which led to re-evaluation of Bach's music. Another example of the same sort is ”The Six Cello Suites". After Bach's death this masterpiece was long regarded as mere etudes for cello, until Pablo Casals discovered the real value of this piece, performed in public often, and recorded often, and therefore we slowly got to understand the real values this masterpiece.

Ms. Yuki Shitaba loves Ysaÿe who loved J.S.Bach, and so produced today's recital of hers. The six sonatas composed by Ysaÿe are very demanding work. The six are respectively dedicated to those who were admired by Ysaÿe: Joseph Szigeti, Jacques Thibaud, Georges Enescu, Fritz Kreisler, and Mathieu Crickboom. Each sonata is composed so as to remind listeners of the distinct characters of the six legendary violinist.

As music instrument, a violin is a very rare existence having structural simplicity and the consequent difficulties in performance. The simplicity is represented by its having only four strings, and the difficulties arise mostly in sounding two sound at the same time, and more difficulties three and four sounds, which are necessary in making clear harmonies. Moreover, polyphonies often found both in Bach and Ysaÿe are mercilessly demanding. However, I see the fundamental charm of performing art of violin comes from the difficulty. The difficulty is understood precisely only by those who play this instrument, i.e., violinists. Only those who understand and overcome the difficulty can bring to us the real charm.

A program note on my recital Yuki Shibata

“Dad, he looks to have eaten a lot of musical nutritions”, I said to my father with astonishments, when I first saw Mr. Ysaÿe, a fat person with a lion-like face. I started feeling that his large stomach did not only signify a simple appetite in a materialistic sense, but rather more to mean his intellectual and spiritual desire. I sometimes witnessed a belly with a spirits, and Mr. Ysaÿe’s belly was the best example. /Boy Jacques Thibaud’s recollection on an occasion with his father when he first met with Mr. Ysaÿe/.

My alma mater, Schola Cantorum, located at Rive Gauche in Paris, was founded by Vincent d’Indy, one of the “Franckists”. Ysaÿe is said to have visited there quite often. It is a very strange feeling that I did and do feel some nostalgic atmosphere in taking lessons there and in playing Ysaÿe’s six sonatas now. My nostalgic feeling probably comes from the lingering flavors of the six violinists to whom Ysaÿe dedicated his six sonatas together with his intimate friendship to them. Professor Patrice Fontanarosa, my mentor there, is a violinist of Franco-Belgian school. He is of the school as Ysaÿe and Thibaud were and therefore I think I was very lucky to have been able to study with him the whole six sonatas of Ysaÿe. Back to Japan, three years has passed and all the precious experiences in Paris look to be becoming a sweet memory now. Yet I do hope my memory will rather grow itself and nurture myself in the coming years of my life, and hence I would like to perform Ysaÿe’s six sonatas.

Eugène Ysaÿe composed the six sonatas, all unaccompanied, only in three months at an incredibly fast pace. What inspired him was the performance by Joseph Szigeti in 1923 of J.S. Bach’s unaccompanied pieces. Sonata No. 1 was dedicated to Joseph Szigeti and has the same tonality and movement numbers as Bach’s first sonata.

Sonata No. 2 was dedicated to a French violinist Jacques Thibaud. The beginning shows a motif reminding us of the very beginning part of Bach’s Partita No. 3. It sounds like a haunting apparition followed by Ysaÿe’s responding melodies, the all scenes being like a vague and remote battle. Ysaÿe and Thibaud were had long-term friendship ever since Thibaud was 11 years old and Ysaÿe 33 years old. Thibaud passed away in an airplane accident, about 20 years after Ysaÿe passed away. As if Ysaÿe had foreseen Thibaud’s unexpected ephemeral life, the sonata, as an exceptional existence in the six sonatas, creates plangency in the mysterious and sad melodies, Dies Irae/“Day of Wrath”, a Gregorian chant often used in motifs for requiems of Masses.

Sonata No. 3 was dedicated to a Rumanian violinist/composer George Enescu who spent whole his life in France. You would be able to smell some ethnicity of Eastern Europe music and the very beginning part of “Impressions d'enfance for violin and piano”, Enescu’s composition. Enescu might have felt some Rumania indigenous air living in France, always missing his mother country.

Sonata No. 4 was dedicated to Fritz Kreisler, a great violinist of the 20th century. Kreisler studied music in Viana and Paris and his compositions and performances are full of elegance. The third movement of this sonata reminds us of Kreisler’s “Praeludium and Allegro”. Thus, Ysaÿe was a very cute person to dedicate to violinist-composers his sonatas readily reminiscent of their originals.

Sonata No. 5 was dedicated to Mathieu Crickboom. He was Ysaÿe’s favorite disciple, born in Liège, the same birthplace as Ysaÿe’s, and a member of Quatuor Ysaÿe for many years. The second movement Danse rustique sounds to have the idyllic dance music of Walloon Region as motif.

The last Sonata No. 6 was dedicated to Manuel Quiroga, a Spanish violinist. It is a one movement virtuosic sonata that has a variety of Spanish ethnicities such as habaneras and toreador postures. Quiroga himself was a technically gifted violinist, but his career as a violinist unfortunately encountered a curtain coming down in a traffic accident. His last years were dedicated to composing concerto cadences and drawing caricatures.

While the unaccompanied masterpiece of J.S. Bach exhibits peaceful, religious and some Italian tastes, Ysaÿe’s sonatas deliver the Belgian fragrances of fin-de-siecle in their every detail. The two composers lived in the eras 200 years apart, and now we now live in an era 100 years after Ysaÿe’s sonatas. The two eras are separated 200 years but in a sense the separation disappears because of Ysaÿe’s love for Bach and the violinists of his era. This time-traveling experience is the whole purpose of my concert. I would be more than happy if you would be feeling traveling back to the time when J.S. Bach and E. Ysaÿe lived together.