Eugène Ysaÿe
Poème élégiaque op. 12 and other Works
Eugène Ysaÿe’s famous 6 Sonatas for Solo Violin op. 27 (HN 776) belong to the canonical repertoire, but the pieces for violin and piano presented here also deserve a place on the music shelf of students and professional violinists. His Poème élégiaque op. 12 – probably the most famous work for this scoring – is to be found in this collection, as are two first editions after newly discovered manuscripts from his estate. An Ysaÿe specialist of the first order, Marie Cornaz contributes a preface that is full of new findings. Editor Ray Iwazumi – very familiar with Ysaÿe’s work as both virtuoso and scholar – presents all of these pieces in Urtext for the first time; his experience likewise proves beneficial for the fingerings in the accompanying marked part.
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
Ray Iwazumi (Editor, Fingering and bowing for Violin)
Marie Cornaz (Preface)
Marie Cornaz is the head of the music division at the Royal Library of Belgium and lecturer in musicology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. After her doctoral dissertation on music publishing in Brussels during the 18th century, she has published on manuscript and printed musical sources kept in Belgian collections and on the history of the musicians in the Low Countries and Belgium between the 17th century and the beginning of the 20th century. She is the author of the following books: L’édition et la diffusion de la musique à Bruxelles au XVIIIe siècle (2001), Les Princes de Chimay et la musique (2002), The Dukes of Arenberg and Music in the Eighteenth Century. The Story of a Music Collection (2015) and À la redécouverte d’Eugène Ysaÿe (2019).
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