Bartok: Violin Sonatas Nos.1 & 2 / Szymanowski: Mythes – Frank Peter Zimmermann

The three works on this recording bear witness to the changes that took place at the dawn of musical modernism. The reappraisal and reinterpretation of traditional musical genres and innovations led to new ways of organising and addressing the harmonic, melodic, timbral and rhythmic elements of music. Polish composer Karol Szymanowski developed a highly personal musical language that prioritises tone colour, an approach that is perfectly suited to the triptych Mythes, inspired by legends from ancient Greece. Here he developed a new mode of expression, a fusion of the violin and the piano into a single entity with the use of extended violin techniques.

The Hungarian Béla Bartók assimilated Szymanowski’s contribution and composed his two sonatas for violin and piano in quick succession at the beginning of the 1920s. These two works, as daring as they are demanding, skilfully blend the influence of contemporary composers such as Debussy and Schoenberg with elements of Central European folklore. Frank Peter Zimmermann, whose recent recording dedicated to Bartók’s two Rhapsodies and Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto (BIS2657) has received international critical acclaim, performs these landmark works with pianist Dmytro Choni, his regular partner since 2023.