Wednesday 18 June 2014

Alina Ibragimova. Arthur Grumiaux


The Gramophone magazine is holding its annual “artist of the year” voting contest, with ten candidates. This year three of the ten, unusually, are violinists: Leonidas Kavakos, Alina Ibragimova, and Renaud Capuçon. My vote went to Ibragimova, but I did hesitate a bit over Vasily Petrenko, the dynamic young Russian conductor.

In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, almost anything recorded by Arthur Grumiaux was a strong recommendation. The Belgian violinist did not like to travel so never achieved an international performing artist reputation. But the Dutch Philips company was more than willing to record him in any music he wanted to play, so we have a multitude of first-class recordings by him from that era, be it in Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert or the Franco-Belgian composers such as Franck, Vieuxtemps, Saint-Saëns, Ravel, Debussy, etc. Grumiaux was primarily a supreme chamber music and duo sonata player, but this did not stop him from recording Tchaikovsky, Paganini, Lalo, etc. You can never go too wrong with a Grumiaux recording.

To my mind, Ibragimova holds a similar position in this century to Grumiaux's in the last. Her Bach sonata playing is supreme. Her Beethoven violin and piano sonata set is truly excellent, as is her Schubert. She excels in Lekeu, Ravel, Chausson, Debussy. She is also to be found promulgating Roslavets, Hartmann, Bartok, and Szymanowski. Promised for the near future are recordings of all the Prokofiev violin & piano works, plus the six solo sonatas of Eugène Ysaÿe. Like Grumiaux, in the main, she seems to avoid the highly virtuoso repertoire of Paganini, Ernst, Wieniawski and Sarasate. Ms Ibragimova is a serious musician and, like Grumiaux, she has her own chamber music group (Chiaroscuro – “authentic”, alas). I have only heard her in person once, at a concert in Bath where she performed solo Bach sonatas and partitas, including a truly memorable performance of the Chaconne from the second partita. Her playing has been characterised as raw but sleek; wild but controlled. In Bach when I heard her, her violin whispered, and roared. The little blond Russian girl is a truly wonderful artist and violinist, which is why she gets my vote.

As a footnote to Arthur Grumiaux: Some years ago I obtained from a friend in South America a set of recordings of 44 short violin pieces played by “Heiftz” on a Korean label. Almost none of the pieces had ever been recorded by Jascha Heifetz, and a comparison of those that had, revealed that the “Heiftz” violinist was not Jascha (though superficially similar). A comparison of those short pieces by "Heiftz" that were also recorded for Philips by Grumiaux, strongly suggests that the Korean “Heiftz” was, in fact, Grumiaux (probably moonlighting under a pseudonym in return for some much-needed hard cash). Needless to say, all 44 pieces were played with Heifetzian aplomb.

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