MUSICWEB: (RECORDING OF THE MONTH)
This is a formidable solo recital from a highly accomplished musician. George Zacharias has constructed a programme that begins and ends with Paganini and has located at its heart three solo sonatas written twenty years apart that represent some of the greatest such works written in the twentieth century.

The first of these is the Bartók. If one thinks here of Menuhin, or Tetzlaff's powerful inscription (Virgin 5456682) or the more recent live Kremer (EMI 6933992), so resinous and biting, one should not overlook this newcomer. His tonal resources do not cleave to the brittle or plosive Kremeresque or indeed to the sometimes folkloric hues propounded by Tetzlaff. If there is a general feeling that he is temperamentally closer to Menuhin, it is a tangential matter. He adopts resourceful tempi, finely judged, unexceptionable in the best sense. His voicings are varied subtly and imaginatively, and at the apex of this performance sits the Melodia (with mute) which is a small master class in accentuation, dynamic shading and myriad suggestive colouristic devices - all sounding perfectly natural and unforced.

It's a fine prelude for the earlier sonata by Skalkottas, a work of concentrated achievement within the course of its four movement, twelve minute length. Even in this early-days period of his compositional development one senses Skalkottas's occasionally bristling vocabulary. Zacharias offers a probing statement on the matter and if, in the final result, I tend to prefer Georgios Demertzis (BIS CD 1024) it's because at a very slower tempo he reveals more of the numbness that lies in the work's bloodstream and also a very slightly more abrasive take on its modernity. Zacharias has also chosen the sonata Ysaÿe wrote for Manuel Quiroga, a Spanish violinist of outstanding gifts who unfortunately left behind only a series of morceaux 78s by which to be judged. Brief and concentrated this receives a winning reading different from, but significantly better recorded than, say, Oscar Shumsky's famed recording (Nimbus NI1735). Zacharias's tone here is rightly broader, wider and more romanticised in orientation, as befits this masterpiece of Ysaÿe's last years.

One now turns, semi-exhausted after the level of virtuosity, to the two Paganini pieces that frame these three solo sonatas. Nel cor più , a favourite of Old School lions up to Accardo and beyond, receives a truly insouciant dusting, the gymnastics of the fourth variation in particular dispatched with outrageous authority. Few dare attempt the God Save The King variations in public, so ferocious are the demands. Here we find nearly eight minutes' worth of wrist numbing drama, projected with unstinting panache.

Adding to the lustre of this disc is the booklet. I don't normally go on about such things but a word of praise should be sent to the team responsible for this one. The composer photographs, though small, are clear, and the whole thing has a most attractive appearance.

When one encounters excellence of this kind it's right to acknowledge the fact. So too the recorded sound, and the recital as a whole. More from this source please - and soon.
Jonathan Woolf

THE STRAD: (gold star recommendation)
By any standards this is an outstanding disc debut. George Zacharias, a young Greek violinist, studied in Athens with Pantelis Despotidis, in London with Yossi Zivoni and in Sydney with Wanda Wilkomirska. He has been doing a PhD on Skalkottas's music at the Royal Academy of Music in London (RAM).

He frames his programme with Paganini variations, brilliantly played. The more enjoyable set is ‘Nel cor', where the tremolos, harmonics, left-hand pizzicatos and bow-bouncing acrobatics fit into a fine sequence. ‘God Save the King' is so fiendish that I rarely hear it in concert. Zacharias does well with it – fellow fiddlers will blanch to hear him.

Bartók's Sonata, with the microtones in the finale that Zacharias has researched in the RAM Menuhin collection, is notable for excellent tempos. The first movement is played with precision and a lovely soft ending; the Fuga is incisive; Zacharias finds a beautiful mezza voce quality for the Melodia, sometimes unearthly quiet; and he swings nicely through the Presto.

Sklakottas's Sonata, his earliest surviving work, is in six short sections, the fourth and sixth identical. In this performance it comes across impressively. It can be described as ‘1920s eclectic' but you hear a personality emerging. Zacharias is equally good at the dramatic and poetic parts.

Ysaÿe's Sonata, written for Quiroga with Spanish elements, rightly draws a more Romantic tone and style from Zacharias. The recordings catch his 1810 Ceruti well, although I would like more ‘ring' at the top.
Tully Potter

MUSICAL POINTERS:
Acquired to complement my Skalkottas collection, this taken as a whole proves an excellent solo violin recital. It puts Paganini into a future context and brings Skalkottas into close relationship with Bartok, whose solo sonata is well established in the repertoire.

Nikos Skalkottas was a concert class violinist and an important Schoenberg pupil. This early but important sonata preceded that phase.

He had already developed his characteristic "multiple series in advanced tonality" method, as opposed to Schoenberg's "solid serial system" (GZ). Introducing his 'fractal' compositional technique, and a clever solution to the problem of multi-voicing for solo violin, it is an important creation, receiving a full analysis by the player, who is completing research on Skalkottas' violin concerto for his PhD. The sonata remained the composer's only surviving work for a solo instrument other than piano.

The Paganini choices are unusual ones, and confirm this player's credentials as a top class virtuoso. They are more enjoyable in mixed company, and the last of Ysaye's six (all composed at white-heat in a single week !) is a proper companion. The Bartok sonata gives the recital a solid centre, and the whole is very satisfying. Presentation is thorough and the cover art features the Ceruti violin lent to George Zacharias by London's Royal Academy of Music.
Peter Grahame Woolf

INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW:
So closely identified in the aristocratic Salvatore Accardo with Paganini's solo violin works on disc that it is almost impossible to hear either set of variations included here without his super-refined sound and effortless agility ringing in one's ears. Greek virtuoso George Zacharias is no less fleet-fingered and stylistically assured than his Italian colleague; indeed, some may prefer his more luxuriously rounded sound, smoother legato and almost superhuman taming of ‘noises off'. That said, it is Accardo who truly captures the music's inherent sense of danger and at times almost comically insane technical demands. If Zacharias leaves one lost in admiration at his remarkable facility, Accardo has one sitting slack-jawed in amazement at the sheer effrontery of it all.

The most demanding of all works for solo violin is the Bartók Sonata, composed during a four-month stay in Asheville, North Carolina during the winter of 1943-44. The opening Tempo di ciaccona established the work's credentials with its dramatic rethinking of Baroque formal procedures, its tripartite structure ingeniously welding together elements of the chaconne with those of sonata style. The Fuga opens more formally but then tends towards free fantasy, highlighted by often excruciating technical demands. The shadowy world of the Melodia is enhanced by the use of a mute, creating a distantly veiled sonority, articulated by mysterious trill and tremolo figurations, while the Presto finale is a breathtaking whirlwind of ferocious pyrotechnics and unstoppable rhythmic force.

Although it was written for Yehudi Menuhin (who recorded an imposing if technically less than mellifluous account for EMI), no one in recent years has come as close as Christian Tetzlaff (Virgin) to unlocking this score's almost impenetrable secrets. If Tetzlaff uses the music's indigenous folk-music origins as an interpretative launch-pad, creating the strange impression of a crazed gypsy violinist in meltdown, Zacharias is temperamentally far closer to Menuhin in his apparent desire to absorb this intractable score into the Western performing tradition. At times one might wish that Zacharias had let Bartók's more startling revelations off the leash, but for a reading that places this masterpiece in a direct line from Bach's solo sonatas and partitas, this is one of the finest recordings currently available.

Although relatively little is heard of his music today, Greek composer and violinist Nikos Skalkottas briefly achieved cult status during the 1960s. Starting out as a shameless neo-Classicist, following a period of severe depression associated with various marital problems, he emerged as a more intellectually rigorous figure and began embracing the serial techniques of Arnold Schoenberg. His Solo Violin Sonata is the earliest of his surviving works, yet already one can sense his individual voice emerging in this four-movement, 12-minute piece, which, although tonally no more adventurous than Ysaye's solo sonatas, makes even more overt cross-references to the violin classics of the past.

The one-movement Sixth of Ysaye's Solo Violin Sonatas is dedicated to Manuel Quiroga (1890-1961), a fabulously gifted Spanish prodigy, who had looked set to become one of the leading players of his generation until his career was cut tragically short by a debilitating accident. He died shortly after his seventy-first birthday in April 1961, coincidentally just a few months before Fritz Kreisler, dedicatee of the Fourth Sonata.

Zacharias proves especially persuasive in these enormously demanding opuses, tracing their expressive logic with a probing assuredness that is enormously compelling. I look forward to his next release with eager anticipation.
Julian Haylock

MUSICWEB (2):
In a master class conducted by Andrés Segovia at the University of Southern California, July 1981, students were given the opportunity to perform solo. While most students elected to perform pieces from Segovia's repertory, a minority chose works outside. One student was stopped while playing the Adagio from Bach's Violin Sonata No. 1 as it is not polyphonic. Segovia explained: ‘ If you play this piece and there is a violinist in the audience he will smile at you. You don't want him to smile at you. The Fugue is different; it is polyphonic. With the Fugue you can smile at the violinist. ' 

Segovia had a point: for sustain, timbre and a single line the violin is outstanding, if not unbeatable. The majority of the violin's repertory is for the instrument to star in partnership or as a participant in collectiveness. Perhaps the greatest and most conspicuous exception is the six Partitas and Sonatas for solo violin by J.S. Bach. In the hands of a virtuoso, multiple stoppings cater for intervals giving the violin solo capability. The review disc pursues the violin in that status. Others including Paganini, Bartók, YsaŸe and Skalkottas wrote music for solo violin and it is from their opera that the programme here is selected.

Sixteen of the twenty-five tracks were written by Paganini, renowned as one of the greatest exponents of the violin, solo or otherwise. Although nothing subsequently written for solo violin excelled, or indeed compared with Bach's six Partitas and Sonata, some outstanding solo music for the violin is presented here. The amazing Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe took only one week to sketch out the musical ideas for his six sonatas, Op. 27. His preoccupation with Bach's earlier work is reflected in his own: the first sonata is a shadow of Bach's own first sonata in the key of G minor - it does turn to the relative major. This preoccupation becomes more an emphatic presence in his ‘ Obsession ' the essence of which is taken from Bach' s Partita in E major Prelude. The only work presented that was not written by a violinist is Béla Bartók's Sonata, Sz 117. Although Nikos Skalkottas is best remembered as belonging to Schoenberg's elite composition students, it should not be forgotten that he was first, and remained, a concert violinist of prodigious talent.

Violinist, George Zacharias was born in Athens and attended the Athens Conservatory of Music. At the time of his graduation in 1977 he won the First Prize and Special Virtuosity Prize. In that same year he was accepted into an advanced year of study at the Royal College of Music, London, and was subsequently admitted to the Bachelor's Degree in Music and two postgraduate Degrees in Advanced Solo and Ensemble Performance. Under a full Greek State Scholarship for Music, in July 2004 he was awarded the Master's of Music Degree in Performance with Distinction at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Australia.

For those outside the violin-playing fraternity, in-depth appreciation of the solo violin is probably an acquired taste. The bowing of intervals and multiples, can on occasion sound jerky. Here one is reminded of comments regarding Nathan Milstein whose bowing in solo music was likened to the ‘thrustings of a rapier.' In reflecting on the comments of Andrés Segovia regarding the Fugue in G minor from the first Bach Sonata, it is interesting to compare the original for violin with the arrangement for guitar. One may then conjecture as to why he felt ‘ the guitarist can smile at the violinist '. 

In all aspects, the rendition of the music on this disc by George Zacharias is well performed. His interpretations reflect not only a highly refined technique but also empathy with the essence of the music. It is well recommended but with one caveat: in small doses for those unaccustomed to listening to solo violin music for sustained periods. For the uninitiated, the Six Partitas and Sonatas by J.S. Bach are a good introductory undertaking.
Zane Turner

FANFARE:
George Zacharias's solo recital, recorded on June 28 and July 2, 2008, transmits just the right amount of the reverberation in All Saints Parish Church, Leighton Buzzard, England, to enhance the sound of the 1810 Ceruti violin on loan to him from the Royal Academy of Music's instrument collection. If that weren't enough to showcase his violinistic and musical attainments, the repertoire would either do so or break him, as on the rack. The opening work, Paganini's demanding Variations on “Nel cor più non mi sento” by Paisiello, displays the young Greek's technical acuity, which he has honed to a sharpness that allows him to indulge in dramatic gestures that might seem less effective has he not so thoroughly mastered the Variations' virtuoso effects. For example, the slight pauses between the double harmonics in the Third Variation don't seem either the result of uncertainty of gratuitous eccentricity due to the double harmonics' bell-like sonority. In the Fourth Variation, it's easy to hear the bowed notes among the flurries of left-hand pizzicato; those who would prefer a more percussive bow stroke that doesn't allow the listener to distinguish them may be disappointed.

Bartók's Solo Sonata, besides its technical demands, requires an ability to hurl the work's angular fragments without tearing the haunting melodic sinews asunder. Violinists vary in their approach. Some, for example Christian Tetzlaff and perhaps even dedicatee Menuhin himself, file the jagged edges; others, for example Viktoria Mullova, György Pauk or Yulia Krasko leave them to project menacingly. As a listener might have expected from Zacharias's hyper-acute performance of Paganini, je takes no hostages in the first movement of Bartók's Sonata. Hardly making any concessions to tonal beauty or relaxing the severity of his approach. The Fuga only intensifies this extremely sharp focus, the Melodia barely relaxes the stringency, and the finale, in which Zacharias plays Bartók's original microtones, maintains the tension to the very end.

Zacharias's notes identify Nikos Skalkottas's Sonata as the earliest of the composer's surviving works and one he presented to Arnold Schoenberg. Its apparent austerity and rhythmic vigor shouldn't cloak its contrapuntal ingenuity and the wealth of its ideas. Zacharias plays the piece with the same thrusting angularity with which he projected Bartók's Sonata, and he doesn't relax in Eugène Ysaÿe's Sixth Solo Sonata, the last in a set dedicated to his violinistic contemporaries (in this case, Manuel Quiroga). In the opening flourishes, Zacharias sounds as though he hasn't quite mastered the passage well enough to lay it with the comparatively rock-solid intonation we've heard in performances by Kremer, Ricci, and Kavakos, to mention only a few. In this one-movement work, as in the others, Zacharias's focus gives the impression of examining passages in isolation rather than connecting them to those that precede them and to those that follow. The resulting clarity can create, as in Paganini, a sense of frisson , or, here and in some of the more melodic passages in Bartók's work, an impression of disconnectedness that's either refreshing or disconcerting, depending on your predilections. In Ysaÿe's work, though, the focus, coupled with a slight sense that the difficulties haven't been completely shorn, doesn't seem to flatter the original composition, despite many striking moments.

Ruggiero Ricci identified Paganini's “ Variations on God Save the King” as the most difficult of his works, and, in his notes, so does Zacharias. So he takes the work (although the entire one, with all the variations intact) at a deliberate tempo that destroys the sense of astonished excitement that Ricci's recordings generated (with and without piano). Only a few violinists have recorded this work, and perhaps, if they felt free to slow it down this much, many more would do so. But then, why bother?

Those not put off by Zacharias's generally squeaky-clean performances, with lots of white space, or by a quirkiness that doesn't quite cross into outright eccentricity. May find this collection more congenial than might those who prefer a warmer, if equally thoughtful and masterly, approach to the repertoire. Recommended to the first category of listeners and collectors.
Robert Maxham