Andrew Armstrong

James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong – Mythes (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:51 minutes | 943 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Onyx Classics

Already a presence to be reckoned with by his early 20s, James Ehnes has risen steadily to claim a place among the finest violinists of the day. Critics were impressed with both his immaculate technique and his musical integrity, each of an order rare enough in a musician of any age. Ehnes has continued to consolidate his strengths, bringing audiences a brand of music-making that transcends the present and draws upon the richest traditions of ages past. Born into a musical family, Ehnes was exposed to a variety of instruments as a child, but found himself attracted to the violin.

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James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong – Debussy, Elgar, Respighi & Sibelius: Violin Sonatas (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:58 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Onyx Classics

After a rapturous critical reception for their Franck & Strauss Violin Sonatas, [see below] James and Andrew turn their attention to three violin sonatas all composed around the years of World War I. The Sibelius ‘Berceuse’ also dates from the war years when Finland was isolated from the rest of Europe. Sibelius was short of money and busy writing the 6th and 7th symphonies, and planning his 8th: the six short pieces of Op. 79 were attractive to publishers who were wary of large scale works with little chance of commercial return during the hostilities. Debussy would die in 1918 and had, like Elgar, composed very little during the conflict. ‘I want to work,’ he wrote to his publisher Durand, ‘not so much for myself, as to provide a proof, however small, that thirty million Boches can t destroy French thought’. Elgar told a friend ‘I cannot do any real work with the awful shadow hanging over us’ he said. Suffering from ill health, Elgar wrote the sonata in Sussex where a copse of gnarled lightning-ravaged trees, near his house on the South Downs, inspired him to embark on three late great chamber works. Respighi s sonata inhabits a heroic late romantic almost Brahmsian world, seemingly unscathed by the devastation of the War to end all wars .

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James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong – Bartok: Works for Violin and Piano, Vol. 2 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:05 minutes | 869 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

James Ehnes has previously explored Béla Bartók’s concertos for violin and for viola, to great acclaim. This album is the second in his equally successful survey of Bartók’s chamber music for the violin. His accompanist, once more, is Andrew Armstrong, a pianist praised by critics for his passionate expression and dazzling technique.

The folk-inspired Sonata for Solo Violin was the last work that Bartók wrote for the instrument, not to mention the most challenging. In a departure from his usual practice, this work was written not for a fellow Hungarian, but rather for an artist born in New York where Bartók was now living: Yehudi Menuhin. Suitably impressed by a recital performance by Menuhin of his first Violin Sonata as well as Bach’s Sonata in C, he had no hesitation in accepting the violinist’s commission for a sonata that, like Bach’s, would be unaccompanied.

Almost half a century earlier, Bartók had written his Sonata for Violin and Piano in E minor. It was included in a concert given by graduating students of the Liszt Academy in June 1903, when a critic, most likely not realising just how right he would prove, hailed Bartók as ‘a phenomenal young genius, whose name today is known only to a few, but who is destined to play a great and brilliant role in the history of Hungarian music’.

Additionally on this album we have three groups of Bartók’s Romanian and Hungarian folk dances, folksongs, and folk tunes, arranged for violin variously by Zoltán Székely, Tivadar Országh, and Joseph Szigeti, often with direct involvement by the composer himself who helped fine-tune the new arrangements. James Ehnes also highlights the Romanian influences in Bartók’s Sonatina for piano, transcribed for violin by André Gertler, a student of Bartók’s.
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Andrew Armstrong, James Ehnes – Bartók: Works for Violin and Piano, Vol. 1 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:41 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

This is the second volume in a series devoted to the works for strings by Béla Bartók, with James Ehnes the featured soloist. Earlier this year, Ehnes recorded the Violin and Viola Concertos (CHAN 10690), which was made Disc of the Month in Gramophone magazine. On this new recording, he turns to the Violin Sonatas and Rhapsodies, complemented by the earliest surviving work by Bartók for violin and piano, an Andante. He is accompanied by the pianist Andrew Armstrong.
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