Sonates pour violon solo

Editor's Choice Gramophone Magazine January 2005

Gramophone Magazine Award Winner 2005 - Instrumental

"There is something very special about a stringed instrument playing on its own. Not only do you feel closer to the sheer physicality of bow-on- string, but the music itself seems to take on a quite remarkably intense level of concentration - it may also be partly due to the quality of the slender repertoire for solo strings. Ysaÿe's six sonatas from 1923-24 are a homage not only to their six violinist dedicatees but also to the spirit and example of JS Bach. Zehetmair plays superbly."
(Gramophone)

***** Five Stars (Pick of the Month) BBC Music Magazine (Jan 05)

"Zehetmair's performances of these hugely demanding sonatas are fabulously impressive. This is a perfect example of how a great interpreter can transform musical base metal into something infinitely more precious. … Zehetmair's achievement is to unite all ... conflicting creative currents into a single, surging flood of invention. The playing is so assured, so instinctively musical, that you take everything he plays on trust, believing with him that it is genuinely great music."
- Andrew Clements, The Guardian

These six works - a single opus, produced in 1923 - are in a direct line from Bach's solo violin sonatas and partitas and show that, as a composer, the Belgian virtuoso was more than a "parti-pris" enabler of his instrument. … Zehetmair's playing is utterly stylish and alive, and recorded with fierce immediacy.
- Paul Driver, Sunday Times

Astonishing music, played with passion, verve and commitment.

Thomas Zehetmair provided a tantalizing taste of his affinity with the music of Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) on Heinz Holliger's "Violinkonzert" album, where the 3rd of Ysaÿe's Sonatas functioned as a dazzling preface. Now comes a recording of all six of the Ysaÿe sonatas for violin solo. Written in 1923/24, Ysaÿe's violin sonatas belong, with Bach's sonatas and partitas and Paganini's caprices, to the great masterworks of music for unaccompanied violin.

"Like Ysaÿe a century before, Zehetmair established himself as a musician with a personal vision and an inquiring mind, a player of passion and accuracy… He burns himself into the music and disappears." - Paul Griffiths