YAMEN SAADI / JULIEN QUENTIN

Ysaÿe wrote his Poème élégiaque in 1892, dedicated to Fauré and based on the tomb scene in Romeo and Juliet. Cast as one single long movement, its elegantly lyrical D minor outer ends encase a central B flat minor ‘Scène funèbre’ depicting Romeo grieving over Juliet’s apparently dead body, sombre bell tolls in the piano, and the violin not just in its lower registers, but with its bottom G string tuned down a further tone to F. By contrast, Franck’s four-movement Violin Sonata of 1886 was a wedding present for Ysaÿe. Time hangs dreamily suspended over its opening bars, whose prominent interval of a third then feeds much of the movement to come. Next come a turbulent, virtuosic Allegro, followed by an opera-esque, atmosphere-laden recitativo-fantasia ending apparently in dark despair – making for a heightened sense of radiant release at the outset of the A major finale, which opens with the two instruments tenderly intertwined in canon, and closes in rapturous triumph. Strauss’s ardent three-movement Violin Sonata of the following year was then inspired by his future wife, soprano Pauline de Ahna, and there’s often an operatic feel to its luxurious, inventive textures and bold harmonic twists.