RANDALL GOOSBY / JULIEN QUENTIN

© Randall Goosby & Zhu Wang – Young Concert Artists

Outstanding fencer, commander of the armies during the french Revolution; and yet, we are talking about Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George, violin virtuoso and musician to the King’s court! In recent years, there has been unprecedented interest in his work. It has to be said that the extremely gripping, bouncy character of his works is frighteningly effective, as in the dancing triplet rhythm that punctuates the final Rondo of his third Sonata for Violin and Piano.  

In his first Sonata, Gabriel Fauré, who passed away 100 years ago in 2024, gives us a work from his youth that is fresh, lively and spring-like, musically transcribing the amorous impulses of early adulthood in the broad phrases of the first movement. The gentle Scherzo, with its characteristic spiccato movement, can evoke a light, fast dance, or a repetitive mechanical movement, reminding us that Fauré grew up in the industrial age.  

Earlier, Chausson’s Poème blossomed into a much more hazy and mysterious lyricism, inspired by a poem by Turgenev. Dedicated, like Fauré’s Sonata, to the great virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe, it shows another facet of the French violin school of the Belle Époque.  

The mood is even more different in Schubert’s Rondo. Developing the rhetoric of the bow with Mozartian ease, the melodies multiply and compete in inventiveness in a heroic character that will suit Randall Goosby marvellously, whose charisma makes him the ideal interpreter of this lively and spiritual work.