Franck, Debussy, Ravel: Violin Sonatas

“The most striking aspect of this challenging recital is Jennifer Pike's fearless exploration of the violin's lower dynamic range. French music is all about colour and here she reveals radiant hues and patinas that most players leave hidden under layers of interpretative accretion...Pike's dazzling interpretative flair and exemplary technique combine to create one of the most outstanding debut violin albums of recent years.” --Classic FM Magazine, June 2011 *****

 

 

“Pike's playing is muscular, her intonation immaculate. She plays a 1708 Goffriller, which has a pleasantly dark sound when required. She discovers the right mix of fantasy and nostalgia in Debussy's late Sonata...this is a most impressive debut recital disc, presenting a fully fledged artist who has much to communicate through her expressive playing.” --International Record Review, April 2011

“Pike finds much to relish in [the three sonatas], not only in her beautiful singing tone, but also in moments of hushed mystery, all captured in an admirably clear recording that slightly over-favours the violin. Debussy's multiple gear-changes, Ravel's jazz-inflected musings and Franck's intense emotions are negotiated with ease.” --BBC Music Magazine, May 2011 ****

“Pike never over-eggs the gypsy element in Debussy, the blues in Ravel or the Germanic influence in Franck: she simply makes sure they inhabit their distinctive idiom...And yet, thanks to her thoughtful, lightly worn musicianship and Martin Roscoe’s sensitive pianism, each piece retains its unmistakably Gallic flavour.” --Financial Times, 30th April 2011 ***

“thoroughly idiomatic, glistening performances of three core French violin sonatas. This is playing that brims with character, bringing a smoky seductiveness to the finale of the Debussy. Franck’s A-major sonata is given with plenty of passion tempered by winning finesse in dynamics and tonal shading.” --The Telegraph, 12th May 2011 ****

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Franck & Fauré: String Quartets

“The Dante Quartet are superb advocates, especially in the Franck, where they are without peer among modern accounts.” --BBC Music Magazine, August 2008 *****

“…from the opening bars of the Franck we feel the intensity of the Dante's commitment. In the Fauré there's a nice ebb and flow of feeling as the music progresses… It's certainly playing of great accomplishment.” --Gramophone Magazine, October 2008

BBC Music Magazine Awards 2009 - Chamber Award Winner

The great French composers Fauré and Franck have generally been cast as total opposites, but in fact they had much in common. Neither were really men of the theatre, nor were they natural symphonists, nor were they flashy orchestrators in the Berlioz or Rimsky-Korsakov tradition. But both cultivated what the French call ‘intériorité’, which one could translate as ‘intimacy’, though this loses the sense of deep reflection, even of transcendence, immanent in the French term. Finally, as it turned out, the last works of both were string quartets. Recorded together here, these beautiful final works demonstrate a thorough maturity of spirit and talent in both composers.

Franck’s quartet breaks new ground, particularly in the complex structure of the first movement. The discourse is also shot through with sudden silences, as though questioning the propriety of the whole enterprise—silences whose force was surely not lost on the young Debussy, who a few years later was to claim silence as one of his most fruitful discoveries. The String Quartet in E minor by Fauré is almost backward-looking in its modal tonality, and a model of ‘intériorité’.

Winner of the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Chamber Music in 2007, the Dante Quartet is known for its imaginative programming and the emotional intensity of its performances. The group was founded in 1995 at the International Musicians’ Seminar at Prussia Cove, Cornwall. This is its first recording for Hyperion.

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