Enescu: Violin Sonata nr. 3

I keep piling discovery on discovery. In the wake of the recent concert with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Fazil Say I started to look around for some of their recordings. I didn't fall for their Kreutzer sonata, assuming that it would be too extreme in its manner of presentation. But this short Youtube video made me think that the recording Kopatchinskaja made with her family might be fun and interesting to listen to.

I zeroed in immediately on the most substantial piece on the CD: Enescu's Violin Sonata nr. 3 'Dans le caractère populaire roumain' (1926). And wow what an amazing piece of music this is. It seems to transport us back to the beginning of time, when singing was hardly more than wordlessly mimicking the sounds of nature. The music is thoroughly rhapsodic in character. It sounds like improvisation start to finish. And still, it feels like a sonata too, where the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Another 'atavistic' feature of this music is its suggestion of an exploratory pedestrianism, of a nomadic impulse that connects us to the earliest days of civilisation. Oh, this is gipsy music alright.

If I was still looking for proof of Kopatchinskaja's artistry, then this is it. Her violin sounds like a human voice, chanting. There are confused interior monologues, shouts, prayers and laments. The expressive gamut traversed by her instrument is truly astonishing. The first movement - Moderato malinconico - sounds like a long journey through a windswept, inhospitable land. The Andante sostenuto e misterioso is a true night music. Not as 'polished' and composed as Bartok's but visceral and raw. Kopatchinskaja and her formidable partner at the piano Mihaela Ursuleasa create an inky darkness from which spine-tingling shrieks and hisses strike terror in our hearts. There is a more animated middle section and then the music sinks back into its brooding atmosphere. The finale is a gipsy dance that Kopatchinskaja takes at a moderate tempo. It ends in utter disaster. This music is dark matter. It reminds me of Shostakovich's gloomiest moments. As far removed from the breezy exoticism of Enescu's orchestral rapsodies as you can think off.

Over the weekend I picked up another version of this very sonata in the bargain bin at Fnac. A recording (on the Fuga Libera label) by two young musicians residing in Belgium: Lorenzo Gatto (violin) and Milos Popovic (piano). It took me only one or two minutes to appreciate the vast chasm that separates their reading from Kopatchinskaja's. Clearly, the latter has the music in her veins. Technically she seems to stand miles above Gatto. As a result, the Gatto partnership doesn't even seem to scratch the surface of this wild, apocalyptic vortex. Nevertheless, I'm planning to give it a fair hearing.