The world-premiere recording of Eugène Ysaÿe’s “Posthumous” solo violin sonata opens the album Fiddler’s Blues, the latest collaboration between violinist Philippe Graffin and pianist Claire Désert. What follows is an ingenious intersection of works by Paris-based violinists, composers and friends – Debussy, Enescu and Ravel.

Philippe Graffin’s virtuosity combined with his skills as a sleuth have led to the world-premiere recording of a “Posthumous” solo violin sonata by Eugène Ysaÿe, an astonishing discovery that extends the Belgian composer’s canon of his essential six sonatas for the medium. Philippe unearthed the nearly-completed manuscript in the library of the Brussels Conservatoire, and polished off the final movement in the most Ysaÿe-esque manner possible. Philippe’s pechant for intuitive programming is brought to bear on Fiddler’s Blues, combining two Ysaÿe works – including another premiere, the Petite Fantaisie romantique – with a pair of folksy, Bohemian-flavoured works by George Enescu, another virtuoso violinist/composer who emigrated from his native Romania and like Ysaÿe settled in Paris.

Enescu was a classmate of Maurice Ravel whose Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré is an affectionate nod to their teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, whilst his azure-tinged Violin Sonata influences the album’s title. Ravel’s slightly older contemporary Claude Debussy befriended Ysaÿe. Whereas Ysaÿe soared writing works for solo violin, Debussy wrote none. Suggesting how such a work may have sounded, Philippe contributes his own arrangement for solo violin, made together with David Matthews, of Debussy’s enduring piano piece Clair de lune.

“The ten playful miniatures that make up Enescu’s Op. 28, and Ravel’s early Sonata, are impeccably shaped by Graffin and Désert, making this a disc for those who value exquisite refinement above all.” – BBC Music Magazine (on In the Shade of Forests, AV2059)

”Graffin plays with such vibrant character and imagina on, and the whole venture radiates such a life-affirming spontaneity and joy in music-making” – Gramophone (on the world-premiere recording of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto, AV0044)