Eugène Ysaÿe
Six Sonatas op. 27 for Violin solo
First came Johann Sebastian Bach’s sonatas and partitas, then Nicolò Paganini’s caprices. Now, with the op. 27 sonatas of Eugène Ysaÿe, the key works in the repertoire for unaccompanied violin are available in urtext editions from Henle. Ysaÿe peppered these challenging works with extraordinary difficulties, dedicating each of them to a virtuoso violinist of his day and tailoring it to suit his special capabilities. Thanks to newly discovered source material, we are able to present a “definitive text” that in many respects supersedes the previously available text from the first edition.
About the Composer
Eugène Ysaÿe
A Belgian violinist, conductor, and composer, whose virtuosic playing, rich in tone color, significantly influences generations of violinists. His late-Romantic compositions, of which only a few survive, comprise instrumental and chamber music works.
| 1858 | Born in Liège on July 16. He receives his first violin lessons from his father. |
| 1865–69 | At the Brussels Conservatory he studies violin with Désiré Heynberg. |
| from 1869 | Concert tours with his father take him through Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and France, where he performs as a prodigy. |
| 1872 | He continues his studies with Rodolphe Massatt. |
| from 1874 | In Brussels he is a pupil of Henri Vieuxtemps and Henryk Wieniawski. |
| 1876–79 | He follows Vieuxtemps to Paris, where among others he meets César Franck, Anton Rubinstein, and Raoul Pugno. |
| 1879–82 | He is concertmaster of the Bilse Orchestra in Berlin. He meets Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim. |
| 1882 | Together with Rubinstein he sets out on a concert tour through Russia and Scandinavia. |
| from 1883 | In Paris he rises to becomes a well-regarded interpreter and frequent dedicatee of all of France’s great composers, including Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Ernest Chausson, and Camille Saint-Saëns. |
| 1886–97 | He teaches at the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels and gives concerts regularly, including with Enrique Granados, Ferruccio Busoni, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. |
| 1912 | Appointed court music director and Grand Officier de l’Ordre de Léopold. |
| 1917–22 | He emigrates to the United States, leads the Cincinnati Orchestra, and teaches at the conservatory in that city. |
| 1922–30 | Back in Belgium, he undertakes a few more concert tours. |
| 1931 | Dies in Brussels on May 12. |
About the Authors
Norbert Gertsch (Editor)
Dr. Norbert Gertsch, born in 1967 in Rheinkamp/Moers, studied piano solo at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and read musicology and philosophy at the Paris Lodron University in Salzburg and the Ruperto Carola University Heidelberg on a scholarship from the “Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes”. In 1996 he wrote his doctoral thesis on Ludwig van Beethoven’s Missa solemnis (as part of the New Complete Edition) under Ludwig Finscher.
In the following year, he began to work at G. Henle Publishers, initially as an editor for electronic publishing. After working on a two-year project (1999–2000) sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) preparing a new Beethoven Catalogue of Works, he became a scholarly editor at G. Henle Publishers. In 2003 he became Editor-in-Chief, in 2009 Deputy Managing Director and Head of Publishing. As of 1 January 2024, the Executive Board of the Günter Henle Foundation has appointed Dr. Norbert Gertsch, as the new managing director, succeeding Dr. Wolf-Dieter Seiffert.
Gertsch has published many Urtext editions for G. Henle Publishers, including volumes for a new edition of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas together with Murray Perahia.
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