String Quintet in B minor for 2 violins, 2 altos and cello a mon frere Théophile (1894)
String Quartet London (arr. Jacques Ysaye)
Andante in B minor for 2 violins, 2 altos and cello (1893)
Paganini Variations for String Quartet (arr. Jacques Ysaye )

For a long time the fame of Eugene Ysaye as a composer was overshadowed by his fame as a performing musician.

Ysaye was the most renowned violin virtuoso of his generation. Already in the 1890s, when he was a young man in his thirties, he was pivotal in advocating contemporary French and Belgian music. César Franck gave him his Violin Sonata (1886) as a wedding gift; Claude Debussy wrote his String Quartet (1893) for the Ysaye Quartet and the wellknown Poeme (1897) by Ernest Chausson is dedicated to Eugene Ysaye. Chausson modelled this Poeme on an early composition by Ysaye himself: the Poeme Elégiaque for violin and orchestra from 1895, which Ysaye had dedicated to Gabriel Fauré. It was quite common for a musician such as Eugene Ysaye to compose as well. A ‘berceuse’, ‘valse’ or reve d’enfant’ by the musician himself always went down well at recitals of a great violin virtuoso. However, Ysaye did not only compose salon pieces; he also wrote violin concertos, symphonic poems and chamber music. And later, in 1923, he wrote his legendary Six Sonatas for Solo Violin, a musical heritage for the generations to come: they are the violinists’ equivalent to the Six Cello Suites by Bach. Ysaye’s work is not always easy to track down. Many compositions only exist in manuscript or they were not published until years later, sometimes in adapted versions. His son Antoine Ysaye and later his grandson Jacques Ysaye took care of the musical heritage and publications. Today the collection is located in the Royal Library of Brussels. This CD presents some premieres from this collection.