Tai Murray (violin)Harmonia Mundi HMU 907569 ***

Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931), one of the towering violin virtuosos of his time (a dedicatee of Franck’s Violin Sonata and Debussy’s String Quartet), was also an important teacher, conductor and composer.

He argued that “new works conceived only from the musical point of view bring about the stagnation of technical discovery, the invention of new passages, of novel harmonic wealth of combination is not encouraged”. A violinist, Ysaÿe said, “owes it to himself to exploit the great possibilities of his own instrument”. He did this most famously in a set of six demanding sonatas for solo violin, published in 1924, each dedicated to a great colleague – Szigeti, Thibaud, Enesco, Kreisler, Crickboom and Quiroga. Chicago violinist

Tai Murray's Harmonia Mundi debut offers well-controlled, sober, contained accounts of these often fantastical and willful works. url.ie/55ay