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Bach's Long Shadow
Francisco Fullana (violin), with Stella Chen (violin)
Awards:
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BBC Music Magazine, August 2021, Instrumental Choice
Fullana includes the E major Partita, employing gut strings, Baroque bow and authentic ornamentation. In so doing, he finds a compelling middle-way between Romantic and period-instrument rhetoric,...
Bach's Long Shadow
Francisco Fullana (violin), with Stella Chen (violin)
Purchase product
Awards:
-
BBC Music Magazine, August 2021, Instrumental Choice
Fullana includes the E major Partita, employing gut strings, Baroque bow and authentic ornamentation. In so doing, he finds a compelling middle-way between Romantic and period-instrument rhetoric,...
About
Spanish-American violinist Francisco Fullana has taken the Partita No. 3 in E by J.S. Bach and built around it a programme of interlinked yet contrasting works, resulting in an original and intricately constructed album. J.S. Bach’s output has had a far-reaching impact, casting the Long Shadow that gives this album its name. Fullana uses gut strings, a baroque bow and historically informed ornamentation for his performance of Bach’s E minor Partita, creating a pared-down, immediate interpretation. Ysaÿe was inspired to write his Op. 27 Sonatas after hearing Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas. Yet whereas Bach’s music demands restraint from the performer, Ysaÿe’s encourages virtuosity. There is darkness in this Sonata, too, and Fullana performs the work with electrifying energy. Fritz Kreisler’s Recitativo & Scherzo was dedicated to Ysaÿe, and Fullana feels a special kinship with Kreisler: he plays Kreisler’s first Guarneri violin, the 1735 ‘Mary Portman’ Guarneri del Gesù. The recital culminates in Ysaÿe’s Sonata for Two Violins. Ysaÿe wrote the work to perform with Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, who gave her name to a violin competition that was most recently won by violinist Stella Chen, Fullana’s duo partner on this album.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
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BBC Music MagazineAugust 2021Instrumental Choice
August 2021
Fullana includes the E major Partita, employing gut strings, Baroque bow and authentic ornamentation. In so doing, he finds a compelling middle-way between Romantic and period-instrument rhetoric, inflecting phrases with a smiling affection that feels entirely natural.
September 2021
[The Ysaÿe is] a piece of exceptionally convincing, resonant storytelling, brilliantly played by Fullana…beyond the lightness and grace of his attack [in the Bach], again what’s striking is the impression of dance – and also of naturalness.