Alina Ibragimova, Tianwa Yang, Eugène Ysaÿe

I am uneasily aware that each new recording of Eugène Ysaÿe's six sonatas for solo violin that I come across, sees me reaching for superlatives. So I reach up yet again for more superlatives for the new recording by Alina Ibragimova (Hyperion). Incredible virtuosity, of course, but an attractive almost whimsical approach to these highly varied sonatas. The only time I heard Ibragimova live in a recital hall, I marvelled at the dynamic range she obtained from her violin, ranging from extreme pianissimos to ear-splitting fortissimos. And she can make her violin coo like a dove, or roar like a lion. A phenomenal violinist and musician, and at just under 68 minutes for the sonatas on this CD, she kept me enthralled throughout.

Her CD goes head-to-head with another phenomenal young woman, Tianwa Yang, whose recent CD of the six same works had me again reaching for superlatives a few months ago. One difference becomes immediately apparent: although both young women take pretty much the same time over the third sonata, the Russian's CD plays for just under 68 minutes, the Chinese for 74 and a half minutes; quite a difference. Where Ibragimova is whimsical and mercurial, Yang is steady; her style of precise and deliberate articulation was already established when she recorded the 24 Paganini caprices at the age of 13.

There is nothing to choose between recording quality with Hyperion, and Naxos. A small criticism of either Ibragimova or Hyperion is that the Russian's dynamic range is so extensive that her extreme pianissimos are sometimes almost inaudible, even listening over headphones as I had to, in the end; her ending of the first movement of the first sonata is hard to hear at any normal listening volume. Yang, or Naxos's engineers, judge things better. For once, I have no accompanist to moan about, and a choice between Ibragimova and Yang is pretty clear: the two are so different that you have to have both! As a bonus, you can probably throw away most of the older recordings of these six works.