Irina Muresanu, violin
Dana Ciocarlie, piano

Guillaume Lekeu,
Albéric Magnard
Sonates pour violon
Violin Sonatas

Guillaume Lekeu
Sonate en Sol
Sonata in G

Très modéré – Vif et passionné
Very moderate – Brisk and passionate
Très lent
Very slow
Très animé
Very lively

Albéric Magnard
Sonate opus 13
Sonata opus 13

Large – Animé
Wide – Lively
Calme
Calm
Très vif
Very brisk
Large – Animé
Wide – Lively

Total playing time: 70'28

Production, Sound Engineer: Jean-Marc Laisné.
Recorded at Charrat Muses, Switzerland,
15-16-17-18th December 2005.
Commentary: Nicolas Southon.

AR RE-SE 2006-0

Guillaume Lekeu,
Albéric Magnard
Sonates pour violon
Violin Sonatas

(…) to stay with things original and with Dana Ciocarlie, I can only recommend to you the magnificent CD (AR RE-SE 2006-0) that she just recorded with her countrywoman, violonist Irina Muresanu. Lekeu’s Sonata for violin and piano combined with the lesser-known but just as beautiful Sonata composed by Albéric Magnard (1865-1941): a welcome change from the usual Franck-Lekeu association! A CD to be discovered as soon as possible.

The combination of Lekeu’s Sonata with Magnard’s is a natural one, since these are the two main masterpieces of post-Franckist chamber music, displaying a somewhat agitated late romanticism. These works did not have the same success: Lekeu’s sonata became a repertoire piece, whereas Magnard’s remained confidential for a long time, probably due to its difficulty. None of them, however, really attracted the big shots of violin (so to say). Menuhin and his sister recorded Lekeu at the age of the 78 rpm records (Biddulph). Grumiaux left a moving performance of this work at the beginning of his career for Philips. Later on, Ferras and Barbizet became references (DG), in spite of Poulet and Lee’s qualities (Arion). There are a few other lesser-known recordings that are not always uninteresting.
As for Magnard, the listing is quicker. The sonata was brought to attention by the Zimansky-Keller duo (Accord); Dumay and J.-P. Collard (EMI) and Pasquier and Sermet (Naive) then completed a sparse but rich discography. Irina Muresanu and Dana Ciocarlie are both originally from Rumania. The pianist is better-known in France than the violonist who leads a distinguished international career and teaches in Boston. Irina Muresanu is an extraordinary performer, with a powerful, full, extremely lyrical tone that is also very controlled. She particularly knows how to manage, in perfect agreement with her partner, the long stretches of the discourse, especially in Magnard’s work. What could be verbose becomes epic, narrative, always thought out and put into a narrative (especially in the second and fourth movements of Magnard’s Sonata). The main concern of “Franckist” composers was construction: these ladies can build a solid cathedral-sonata, and with extraordinary sound refinements. For instance, in the development of the Très lent (“Very slow”) movement in Lekeu’s sonata, some unheard-of moon-like tones are offered.
These recordings are real marvels. I personally prefer Ferras’s style in Lekeu’s sonata, which combines lightness and power (the Franco-Belgian school!). In the Magnard, on the other hand, this is the highest level, in spite of Dumay.

All Music Guide
April 2007
David N. Lewis

Sonates pour violon features Boston-based Romanian violinist Irina Muresanu and her regular duet partner, pianist Dana Ciocarlie, who is also Romanian, but based in France.
These two violin sonatas compliment one another well on CD, and it appears they have never before been combined in this way, although both sonatas have been used as filler for the famous Franck A minor violin sonata.
Both composers studied with Vincent D'Indy, both of these sonatas were premiered by the Belgian violinist Eugen Ysayë and both represent the French post-Romantic idiom in its finest hour.
Irina Muresanu is superb in both these works, with a rich, sweet, full tone that does a measure of justice to Ysayë's style of interpretation – she even makes judicious use of forbidden portamenti that is appropriate to the period and idiom of the music.
Ciocarlie invests a lot of emotion into the piano parts, and while at times the piano seems a tad loud, it never overshadows Muresanu. The intensity of Ciocarlie's playing pays off dividends in the Magnard, which is given to abrupt shifts of mood and violent contrasts. Neither of these sonatas has been overexposed, and their pairing here is certainly welcome (...).
In every other respect, this will be of strong interest to the growing number of listeners interested in the late French Romantics.

The mercurially immediate appeal of Guillaume Lekeu’s Violin Sonata has kept it in the fringe repertoire, attracting distinguished interpreters (to say nothing of the irrepressible legion of the mediocre) in classic disc performances beginning with the young Menuhin in 1938 and including Lola Bobesco, Arthur Grumiaux, and the dynamite team of Augustin Dumay and Jean-Philippe Collard. Albéric Magnard’s work — unless I’ve missed something — receives here only its fifth recorded performance and the only one currently available. A late discovery, the Violin Sonata remains virtually unknown. Magnard’s neglect owes both to his passing at the beginning of the Great War and to the peculiarly saturnine properties of his music. By the time the carnage was over, the Jazz Age was in full swing, followed closely by the rival claims of Stravinsky’s neo-Classicism and Schoenberg’s atonality dividing the camp followers of the “advanced.” In this atmosphere, the Franck legacy, which Magnard inherited from his teacher, d’Indy, and the Beethoven worship evident in his most ambitious works, were decidedly vieux jeu and would require fully two generations — 70 years — to take on the aura of old gold. Nor is his Violin Sonata an easy work to know. The repeated exposition of its first movement, for instance, beset with pseudo-improvised feints, is at once sculpted and quivering, its lyricism aristocratically aloof yet exquisitely vaulting. The upshot, like the man himself, is abrupt and disconcerting. For the connoisseur, that means substantial, fascinating, a work meeting Wallace Stevens’s requirement for poetry — that it resist the intellect almost successfully. Muresanu and Ciocarlie seem at home in it, the former singing and soaring with aplomb, the latter — hand-in-glove — whipping up Magnard’s symphonically conceived piano-writing with attuned dexterity; though, for ultimate finesse, the collector will want the 1989 Dumay/Collard account (nla EMI 49890). Lekeu’s Sonata is served with sizzling verve on either side of the central berceuse — given with a rapt mixture of poetry and gentle élan — a performance competitive with any (but, again, marginally overtopped by Dumay and Collard in a 1981 LP album, EMI C 73037).
Liner notes by Nicolas Southon, drawing on Simon-Pierre Perret’s biography, Albéric Magnard (Paris: Fayard, 2001), recounts the first meeting of the composers at the 1889 Bayreuth Festival — the effusive Lekeu, Franck’s last composition pupil, living at the edge of his skin, and Magnard, the hardboiled Parisian boulevardier, did not exactly hit it off. Sound is boxy in quieter passages, the piano slipping into recess, but detailed, balanced, and immediate as things get going. A valuable, vivacious issue; enthusiastically recommended.