Hidden Acoustics CD
Bach's 1724 Partita in D minor including the monumental masterpiece, Ciaccona, is offered with Bartok's 1944 reply, Sonata for Solo Violin. It was performed on the Hubay Stradivarius of 1726, and recorded in Temple Church (initially built in 1185), London. The CD was released in 2010.
Sold in aid of Kids for Kids, a charity that helps children in Darfur.
It had an accompanying CONCERT SERIES which became the origin of my BLOG
Sold in aid of Kids for Kids, a charity that helps children in Darfur.
It had an accompanying CONCERT SERIES which became the origin of my BLOG
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FROM THE PRESS
Anna Picard, Independent on Sunday. Standing Ovation (equivalent *****) 10th October 2010
Three years after winning a Classical Brit Award, Palmer remains the most distinctive violinist of her generation. In this performance of Bartók’s sonata for solo violin and the Bach partita that inspired it, the focus is on the marriage between instrument and acoustic. The match between Palmer’s Stradivarius and the clear glow of the Temple Church is ideal, allowing for the sharpest detail of articulation and unhurried admiration of the musical architecture. The Bartók is brazen and bruised, the Bach exquisitely poised.
Andrew Clements, The Guardian **** 22nd October 2010
Since March this year Ruth Palmer has been touring a programme of solo violin workds that she calls Hidden Acoustics, designed to reveal the sonic properties of a variety of historic buildings. The main works in those recitals are brought together on this disc and recorded at the Temple Church in London. Bartók’s solo sonata, his final completed work, makes the perfect counterpoint to Bach’s famous partita, for it was hearing Yehudi Menuhin play one of Bach’s solo sonatas, the C major, that inspired Bartók to compose his work. The connections go deeper still, for Bartók’s massive first-movement is a chaconne, and clearly evokes the last movement of Bach’s partita in its opening bars. Palmer’s performance of both works is hugely impressive; she combines all the necessary technical skill with a real sense of occasion in her playing. These are unquestionably public performances of tremendous panache. The difference in acoustic between the two works (the Bach a less immediate, more resonant sound) is presumably intended to make a point, but the ear soon adjusts.
Warwick Thompson, Metro 29th October 2010
Young violinist Ruth Palmer shot on to the scene in 2006 with her meaty, self-funded recording of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No.1. Her follow-up, Hidden Acoustics (Nimbus) is an equally impressive account of Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin and Bach’s Partita No.2, recorded in various parts of London’s reverberant Temple Church. Palmer knows when to dig right into the string and fight her Stradivarius to give up its mysteries, and when to coax it gently into sweetness and pathos: it gives her playing irresistible energy and drama. The pairing of the two pieces – Bartók was inspired to write his work by another of Bach’s partitas – is an intellectually satisfying one too, making for a great musical journey.
Stephen Pritchard, The Observer 14th November 2010
Something magical happens when a piece of music and a building match in spirit, says the exciting young British violinist Ruth Palmer, who enjoys exploring the hidden acoustics of places as diverse as the fabulous art deco foyer of the old Daily Express building in Fleet Street, to Villa La Pietra in Florence. Here she records in the more traditional surroundings of London’s Temple church, and while its acoustic can hardly be said to be unexplored, Palmer sends impeccable astringent Bartók and warm, profound Bach in search of the indefinable amid the lofty, ancient vaulting.
Martin Cotton, BBC Music Magazine. Performance**** Recording **** Christmas 2010
Ruth Palmer’s Shostakovich debut CD was warmly received, and for her second she’s chosen two works with absolutely nowhere to hide. Luckily, she doesn’t need to: from the very start of the Bartók there’s complete technical confidence, a wide tonal range and a sure sense of the music’s dramatic direction. In the first movement chaconne, she finds a continuity of line through all the tricky multiple stops, and she charts a clear course through the ensuing fugue. Here, the acoustic of the Temple Church in London seems over-generous, but it gives a sensual warmth to the long-spun melody of the third movement, where Palmer’s flexible rubato and expressive dynamics give the music free rein. In the finale, she restores the quarter-tones which Yehudi Menuhin, the work’s dedicatee, removed, but doesn’t quite find his tonal warmth in the more ’Hungarian’ passages.
The Bach is given a Romantic reading, more along the lines of older interpreters like Sándor Végh than the period-influenced style of, say, Julia Fischer (on Pentatone). In the faster movements Palmer finds a dancing lilt, and only in the great concluding Chaconne did I find her full-on intensity verging on the relentless at times – again the acoustic and recording tend to magnify what’s already a big sound. But there are some more intimate moments, and the pacing is impeccable, bringing the CD full circle: going back to the first track shows exactly where Bartók found his starting point.
Robert Matthew-Walker, International Record Review
IRR Outstanding Award December 2010
Ruth Palmer made an enormous impression a few years ago with her recording of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto and Violin Sonata on Quartz (reviewed in September 2006). This impression is reinforced with this new CD, which contains performances of considerable authority and insight.
The coupling of Bach’s D minor Partita of 1720 and Bartók’s Solo Sonata of 1944, the twin peaks of solo violin writing, is not only a very strong one in terms of repertoire but also one in which the twentieth-century master paid homage to his great predeccessor. The structure, as well as overall tonality, of Bartók’s Sonata is clearly based on that of Bach’s first solo violin Sonata in G minor, and the nature of the concluding Mount Everest of the D minor Partita – the Ciaccona – is reflected in the opening Tempo di Ciaccona of Bartók’s Sonata, and not merely because both movements are by far the longest in their respective works.
In terms of sheer technical ’advancement’ in violin playing, Bartók’s masterpiece goes further than Bach’s – as may only be expected, given the 200 plus years which separate the works – but perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the Hungarian’s achievement is that he was not himself a violinist. The work was written for Yehudi Menuhin, who commissioned it, and while preparing for a television programme at Menuhin’s home in Gstaad almost 20 years ago, I asked him about his initial reaction on collecting the manuscript from the composer. Menuhin replied that after a fortnight’s study, he returned to Bartók and explained that several passages were unplayable. Bartók’s reply astonished him. ’Go away and think about it’, he said (I didn’t have the temerity to press my point, and promised that I would’). After a few days of constant technical application, rethinking the passages in question, Menuhin discovered (’To my astonishment’) that those troublesome bars were indeed playable. (Julian Bream tells a similar story about Britten’s Nocturnal.) However, one facet of the score still troubled Menuhin: Bartók’s use of quarter –tones, which the violinist suggested could be replaced with semitones. In this new recording Palmer obeys the composer’s original thoughts and the result does indeed enhance her expressive achievement.
The sound quality here is quite excellent: the acoustic of London’s Temple Church is no newcomer to recording, for it has been the venue for many famous predeccessors in the catalogues, beginning with Ernst Lough’s 1929 Hear my prayer, and it does not disappoint in this instance. The sound of Palmer’s instrument is fully, naturally and richly caught in every detail - an aspect which does, however, expose the minutae of her art – but she need fear nothing. This is playing of the higest accomplishment, technically and musically, in the latter case raising the appeal of this disc beyond that of fellow violinists: I am certain that the genuine music lover will find no more impressively satisfying accounts of these masterpieces than are contained on this CD.
Palmer not only has the measure of these works in her fingers but also brings a degree of interpretative insight which enables her to shape and convey the character of the movements as they arise. In the Bartók, the opening Tempo di ciaccona is not held on the tightest rhythmic rein (there is no instruction by the composer to do so), as can occassionally inform the readings of other violinists; shes takes the ossia in bar 44 and, I suspect, begins the descending phrase in bar 9 in the fourth position, not the third as Menuhin suggests. I so admire her for taking the original (more difficult) passage at bars 84-86 in the chaconne and, thoughout, her account of this incredible movement is of the hightest quality.
As, indeed, is her playing of the remaining three movements: the Fuga is given with enormous strength, as befits its powerful subject, and even the double-string unison E flat at the end is so wonderfully played that – for the first time in my experience – the different timbres of the two strings as combined can be heard as they resonate: both given equal strength. Such powerful concerntration is surely what Bartók intended. Nor do her tempos slavishly follow the composer’s own: this acoustic demands that the music be heard, and has time to breath. In this, she is guided entirely by the music, and by no other outside infulence.
Bach’s D minor Partita is also wonderfully played; not for Palmer the rigidity of a Germanic approach to eighteenth-century dance styles, for at this time Bach was certainly under a slight but genuine Italian influence in his work, but neither is the inherent pulse of each movement ’played around with’. Her flexibility is just right here, exuding passion where called for and, in the wonderful Corrente, a fleet nimbleness. In the concluding chaconne, her structural understanding is complete: this performance is of a very high stature throughout, comprehensively so.
Overall this is an enormously impressive release whose appeal should extend far beyond that of violin fanciers. My only caveat is the rather obscure title of the record; nothing was ’hidden’ from me.
Julian Haylock, Classic FM Magazine **** February 2011
The Performances As befits Bach’s introspective musings, Ruth Palmer plays the D minor Partita as if entranced by its supreme quality, inflecting its pseudo-contrapuntal lines with infinite subtlety. The sense of accumulating musical power she generates in the awesome Chaconne finale is remarkable. The Bartók Sonata is one of the most formidable works in the violin repertoire, yet Palmer disentangles its finger-breaking demands with such a beguiling awareness of the music’s inner soul that one barely notices its pyrotechnical extravagances. The Verdict Challenges for the virtuoso violinist don’t come much tougher than this, but Palmer emerges not just unscathed but also as a highly distinctive artist in her own right, always seeking for meaning behind the notes under even the most relentless pressure.
Musicweb-International, =Recording Of The Year 2011=
Andrew Morris
Hidden Acoustics Béla BARTÓK (1881-1945) Sonata for solo violin, Sz. 117 (1944) [29.13] Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750) Partita No.2 for solo violin in D minor, BWV 1004 (1720) [31.06] Ruth Palmer (violin) rec. 2-3 February and 29-30 March 2008, Temple Church, London HIDDEN ACOUSTICS NI6133 [60:19] Ruth Palmer is an enterprising British violinist with a talent for creating intriguing projects. Her first album featured music by Shostakovich, accompanied by a self-financed documentary about her own personal journey with the music of the Russian master. Now she turns to two great pillars of the solo violin repertoire: Bartók's fearsome Sonata and the great D minor Partita by Bach. The album Hidden Acoustics coincides with a tour taking in a number of unusual venues in which music can interact with space. Alas, I find I have missed her in my area, but this disc offers full recompense with gripping performances of these mighty works.
- IRR Outstanding Award International Record Review
- Standing ovation (equivalent *****) “exquisitely poised” Independent on Sunday
- **** “hugely impressive” The Guardian
- **** “impeccable” BBC Music Magazine
- “Palmer sends impeccable astringent Bartók and warm, profound Bach in search of the indefinable amid the lofty, ancient vaulting.” The Observer
- “irresistible energy and drama . . . a great musical journey.” Metro
Anna Picard, Independent on Sunday. Standing Ovation (equivalent *****) 10th October 2010
Three years after winning a Classical Brit Award, Palmer remains the most distinctive violinist of her generation. In this performance of Bartók’s sonata for solo violin and the Bach partita that inspired it, the focus is on the marriage between instrument and acoustic. The match between Palmer’s Stradivarius and the clear glow of the Temple Church is ideal, allowing for the sharpest detail of articulation and unhurried admiration of the musical architecture. The Bartók is brazen and bruised, the Bach exquisitely poised.
Andrew Clements, The Guardian **** 22nd October 2010
Since March this year Ruth Palmer has been touring a programme of solo violin workds that she calls Hidden Acoustics, designed to reveal the sonic properties of a variety of historic buildings. The main works in those recitals are brought together on this disc and recorded at the Temple Church in London. Bartók’s solo sonata, his final completed work, makes the perfect counterpoint to Bach’s famous partita, for it was hearing Yehudi Menuhin play one of Bach’s solo sonatas, the C major, that inspired Bartók to compose his work. The connections go deeper still, for Bartók’s massive first-movement is a chaconne, and clearly evokes the last movement of Bach’s partita in its opening bars. Palmer’s performance of both works is hugely impressive; she combines all the necessary technical skill with a real sense of occasion in her playing. These are unquestionably public performances of tremendous panache. The difference in acoustic between the two works (the Bach a less immediate, more resonant sound) is presumably intended to make a point, but the ear soon adjusts.
Warwick Thompson, Metro 29th October 2010
Young violinist Ruth Palmer shot on to the scene in 2006 with her meaty, self-funded recording of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No.1. Her follow-up, Hidden Acoustics (Nimbus) is an equally impressive account of Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin and Bach’s Partita No.2, recorded in various parts of London’s reverberant Temple Church. Palmer knows when to dig right into the string and fight her Stradivarius to give up its mysteries, and when to coax it gently into sweetness and pathos: it gives her playing irresistible energy and drama. The pairing of the two pieces – Bartók was inspired to write his work by another of Bach’s partitas – is an intellectually satisfying one too, making for a great musical journey.
Stephen Pritchard, The Observer 14th November 2010
Something magical happens when a piece of music and a building match in spirit, says the exciting young British violinist Ruth Palmer, who enjoys exploring the hidden acoustics of places as diverse as the fabulous art deco foyer of the old Daily Express building in Fleet Street, to Villa La Pietra in Florence. Here she records in the more traditional surroundings of London’s Temple church, and while its acoustic can hardly be said to be unexplored, Palmer sends impeccable astringent Bartók and warm, profound Bach in search of the indefinable amid the lofty, ancient vaulting.
Martin Cotton, BBC Music Magazine. Performance**** Recording **** Christmas 2010
Ruth Palmer’s Shostakovich debut CD was warmly received, and for her second she’s chosen two works with absolutely nowhere to hide. Luckily, she doesn’t need to: from the very start of the Bartók there’s complete technical confidence, a wide tonal range and a sure sense of the music’s dramatic direction. In the first movement chaconne, she finds a continuity of line through all the tricky multiple stops, and she charts a clear course through the ensuing fugue. Here, the acoustic of the Temple Church in London seems over-generous, but it gives a sensual warmth to the long-spun melody of the third movement, where Palmer’s flexible rubato and expressive dynamics give the music free rein. In the finale, she restores the quarter-tones which Yehudi Menuhin, the work’s dedicatee, removed, but doesn’t quite find his tonal warmth in the more ’Hungarian’ passages.
The Bach is given a Romantic reading, more along the lines of older interpreters like Sándor Végh than the period-influenced style of, say, Julia Fischer (on Pentatone). In the faster movements Palmer finds a dancing lilt, and only in the great concluding Chaconne did I find her full-on intensity verging on the relentless at times – again the acoustic and recording tend to magnify what’s already a big sound. But there are some more intimate moments, and the pacing is impeccable, bringing the CD full circle: going back to the first track shows exactly where Bartók found his starting point.
Robert Matthew-Walker, International Record Review
IRR Outstanding Award December 2010
Ruth Palmer made an enormous impression a few years ago with her recording of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto and Violin Sonata on Quartz (reviewed in September 2006). This impression is reinforced with this new CD, which contains performances of considerable authority and insight.
The coupling of Bach’s D minor Partita of 1720 and Bartók’s Solo Sonata of 1944, the twin peaks of solo violin writing, is not only a very strong one in terms of repertoire but also one in which the twentieth-century master paid homage to his great predeccessor. The structure, as well as overall tonality, of Bartók’s Sonata is clearly based on that of Bach’s first solo violin Sonata in G minor, and the nature of the concluding Mount Everest of the D minor Partita – the Ciaccona – is reflected in the opening Tempo di Ciaccona of Bartók’s Sonata, and not merely because both movements are by far the longest in their respective works.
In terms of sheer technical ’advancement’ in violin playing, Bartók’s masterpiece goes further than Bach’s – as may only be expected, given the 200 plus years which separate the works – but perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the Hungarian’s achievement is that he was not himself a violinist. The work was written for Yehudi Menuhin, who commissioned it, and while preparing for a television programme at Menuhin’s home in Gstaad almost 20 years ago, I asked him about his initial reaction on collecting the manuscript from the composer. Menuhin replied that after a fortnight’s study, he returned to Bartók and explained that several passages were unplayable. Bartók’s reply astonished him. ’Go away and think about it’, he said (I didn’t have the temerity to press my point, and promised that I would’). After a few days of constant technical application, rethinking the passages in question, Menuhin discovered (’To my astonishment’) that those troublesome bars were indeed playable. (Julian Bream tells a similar story about Britten’s Nocturnal.) However, one facet of the score still troubled Menuhin: Bartók’s use of quarter –tones, which the violinist suggested could be replaced with semitones. In this new recording Palmer obeys the composer’s original thoughts and the result does indeed enhance her expressive achievement.
The sound quality here is quite excellent: the acoustic of London’s Temple Church is no newcomer to recording, for it has been the venue for many famous predeccessors in the catalogues, beginning with Ernst Lough’s 1929 Hear my prayer, and it does not disappoint in this instance. The sound of Palmer’s instrument is fully, naturally and richly caught in every detail - an aspect which does, however, expose the minutae of her art – but she need fear nothing. This is playing of the higest accomplishment, technically and musically, in the latter case raising the appeal of this disc beyond that of fellow violinists: I am certain that the genuine music lover will find no more impressively satisfying accounts of these masterpieces than are contained on this CD.
Palmer not only has the measure of these works in her fingers but also brings a degree of interpretative insight which enables her to shape and convey the character of the movements as they arise. In the Bartók, the opening Tempo di ciaccona is not held on the tightest rhythmic rein (there is no instruction by the composer to do so), as can occassionally inform the readings of other violinists; shes takes the ossia in bar 44 and, I suspect, begins the descending phrase in bar 9 in the fourth position, not the third as Menuhin suggests. I so admire her for taking the original (more difficult) passage at bars 84-86 in the chaconne and, thoughout, her account of this incredible movement is of the hightest quality.
As, indeed, is her playing of the remaining three movements: the Fuga is given with enormous strength, as befits its powerful subject, and even the double-string unison E flat at the end is so wonderfully played that – for the first time in my experience – the different timbres of the two strings as combined can be heard as they resonate: both given equal strength. Such powerful concerntration is surely what Bartók intended. Nor do her tempos slavishly follow the composer’s own: this acoustic demands that the music be heard, and has time to breath. In this, she is guided entirely by the music, and by no other outside infulence.
Bach’s D minor Partita is also wonderfully played; not for Palmer the rigidity of a Germanic approach to eighteenth-century dance styles, for at this time Bach was certainly under a slight but genuine Italian influence in his work, but neither is the inherent pulse of each movement ’played around with’. Her flexibility is just right here, exuding passion where called for and, in the wonderful Corrente, a fleet nimbleness. In the concluding chaconne, her structural understanding is complete: this performance is of a very high stature throughout, comprehensively so.
Overall this is an enormously impressive release whose appeal should extend far beyond that of violin fanciers. My only caveat is the rather obscure title of the record; nothing was ’hidden’ from me.
Julian Haylock, Classic FM Magazine **** February 2011
The Performances As befits Bach’s introspective musings, Ruth Palmer plays the D minor Partita as if entranced by its supreme quality, inflecting its pseudo-contrapuntal lines with infinite subtlety. The sense of accumulating musical power she generates in the awesome Chaconne finale is remarkable. The Bartók Sonata is one of the most formidable works in the violin repertoire, yet Palmer disentangles its finger-breaking demands with such a beguiling awareness of the music’s inner soul that one barely notices its pyrotechnical extravagances. The Verdict Challenges for the virtuoso violinist don’t come much tougher than this, but Palmer emerges not just unscathed but also as a highly distinctive artist in her own right, always seeking for meaning behind the notes under even the most relentless pressure.
Musicweb-International, =Recording Of The Year 2011=
Andrew Morris
Hidden Acoustics Béla BARTÓK (1881-1945) Sonata for solo violin, Sz. 117 (1944) [29.13] Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750) Partita No.2 for solo violin in D minor, BWV 1004 (1720) [31.06] Ruth Palmer (violin) rec. 2-3 February and 29-30 March 2008, Temple Church, London HIDDEN ACOUSTICS NI6133 [60:19] Ruth Palmer is an enterprising British violinist with a talent for creating intriguing projects. Her first album featured music by Shostakovich, accompanied by a self-financed documentary about her own personal journey with the music of the Russian master. Now she turns to two great pillars of the solo violin repertoire: Bartók's fearsome Sonata and the great D minor Partita by Bach. The album Hidden Acoustics coincides with a tour taking in a number of unusual venues in which music can interact with space. Alas, I find I have missed her in my area, but this disc offers full recompense with gripping performances of these mighty works.