Marie Cantagrill is an unusual artist. Born in 1979, she earlier won international prizes and studied in Paris and Brussels. She appears to eschew international travel, prestigious artist agencies, mainstream recording studios, and recording labels. She is based in the Ariège region of France, a mainly rural region in south-west France between Toulouse and the Pyrenees. The various recordings of her playing originate from the same region. "A local girl". But she is also a top-class violinist, with an impeccable technique and very remarkable musicianship. Not everyone wants to be a top international touring soloist; good for her. She plays on a violin made by Bernardus Calcanius, in 1748; hardly a name as well-known as Stradivari, Amati, Vuillaume, or Guarneri. But her violin makes a lovely sound. My guess is that her life is a lot happier and more satisfying than that of most super-stellar touring violinists.
A friend sent me recordings of her playing, made by a local company in south-west France. Recording dates unknown. I started listening with interest, and finished with great enthusiasm. I append to this entry a list of violinists on my shelves playing Bach's six unaccompanied sonatas and partitas for solo violin. Suffice it to say that, for me, no one is better than Marie Cantagrill in this music. There is an internal pattern and logic to much of Bach's music that you can only really appreciate when you play it. No amount of studying the score, or consulting musicologists, will tell you definitely how to phrase it, at what tempo, and how it should sound. Ms Cantagrill appears not to be obsessed with the score in order to try to divine Bach's wishes; nor does she appear to have consulted eminent musicologists in order to learn how the works may have been played in Bach's time. She simply puts her violin under her chin and plays the music as she feels it. Slower movements are sometimes very slow; fast movements are sometimes very fast. The dance movements really dance, and the Chaconne of the second partita, taken at a welcome deliberate speed, reveals Ms Cantagrill's incredible double-stopping. Throughout, we wonder at her incredible playing in pianissimo passages. Holding listeners' interest with a solo violin requires a wide repertoire of dynamics, and different bowings. We get all of that with Ms Cantagrill.
There are very, very few minor fluffs in the playing; much as you would get in a live performance of challenging music lasting nearly two hours. My guess is that the local recording studio did not do twelve takes of the same track, as many studios would have done. No wonder Ms. Cantagrill's playing sounds so spontaneous and almost improvised at times. The files came to me from a friend; the recordings are out there somewhere on the web, but may be difficult to find easily. No matter: finding them is a real joy (and an eye-opener as to the playing of "non-celebrities"). As a dessert, I have just received from the same source Ms Cantagrill's recordings of the three sonatas for violin and piano by Brahms. More on that in a future blog entry.
Comparison - the Six Works
Barati, Kristof. 2009
Cantagrill, Marie. [2020]
Enescu, George, 1948
Faust, Isabelle. 2011
Feng, Ning. 2016
Fulkerson, Gregory. 2007
Grumiaux, Arthur, 1960
Hadelich, Augustin. 2020
Heifetz, Jascha, 1952
Ibragimova, Alina. 2008
Kavakos, Leonidas 2020
Milstein, Nathan, 1973
Schayegh, Leila 2020
Shumsky, Oscar. 1978
St. John, Lara, 2007
Suwanai, Akiko. 2021
Suk, Josef. 1970
Tetzlaff, Christian. 1993
Weithaas, Antje. 2012-17
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