Description
Heinz Holliger’s Violin Concerto, subtitled “Hommage à Louis Soutter�, is a musical portrait of the innovative Swiss painter who began his artistic career as a violinist, studying with the great Eugène Ysaÿe . Arguing that his painterly activity was an extension of his playing, Holliger “translates� Soutter’s agitated brushstrokes into pitches. Soutter’s troubled relationship to Ysaÿe is one of the concerto’s conceptual themes, as is the militant pacifism that found expression in his canvasses. In all, a fascinating, highly-detailed work, played with fiery intensity by Thomas Zehetmair, whose account of Ysaÿe’s third sonata – astonishing in its own right - becomes here a highly effective ‘foreword’ to the Holliger composition, laying bare one of its inspirational sources.