Marie Cantagrill
is an unusual artist. Born in 1979, she earlier won international
prizes and studied in Paris and Brussels. She appears to eschew
international travel, prestigious artist agencies, mainstream
recording studios, and recording labels. She is based in the Ariège
region of France, a mainly rural region in south-west France between
Toulouse and the Pyrenees. The various recordings of her playing
originate from the same region. "A local girl". But she is
also a top-class violinist, with an impeccable technique and very
remarkable musicianship. Not everyone wants to be a top international
touring soloist; good for her. She plays on a violin made by
Bernardus Calcanius, in 1748; hardly a name as well-known as
Stradivari, Amati, Vuillaume, or Guarneri. But her violin makes a
lovely sound. My guess is that her life is a lot happier and more
satisfying than that of most super-stellar touring violinists.
A friend sent me
recordings of her playing, made by a local company in south-west
France. Recording dates unknown. I started listening with interest,
and finished with great enthusiasm. I append to this entry a list of
violinists on my shelves playing Bach's six unaccompanied sonatas and
partitas for solo violin. Suffice it to say that, for me, no one
is better than Marie Cantagrill in this music. There is an internal
pattern and logic to much of Bach's music that you can only really
appreciate when you play it. No amount of studying the score, or
consulting musicologists, will tell you definitely how to phrase it,
at what tempo, and how it should sound. Ms Cantagrill appears not to
be obsessed with the score in order to try to divine Bach's wishes;
nor does she appear to have consulted eminent musicologists in order
to learn how the works may have been played in Bach's time. She
simply puts her violin under her chin and plays the music as she
feels it. Slower movements are sometimes very slow; fast movements
are sometimes very fast. The dance movements really dance, and the
Chaconne of the second partita, taken at a welcome deliberate
speed, reveals Ms Cantagrill's incredible double-stopping.
Throughout, we wonder at her incredible playing in pianissimo
passages. Holding listeners' interest with a solo violin requires
a wide repertoire of dynamics, and different bowings. We get all of
that with Ms Cantagrill.
There are very, very
few minor fluffs in the playing; much as you would get in a live
performance of challenging music lasting nearly two hours. My guess
is that the local recording studio did not do twelve takes of the
same track, as many studios would have done. No wonder Ms.
Cantagrill's playing sounds so spontaneous and almost improvised at
times. The files came to me from a friend; the recordings are out
there somewhere on the web, but may be difficult to find easily. No
matter: finding them is a real joy (and an eye-opener as to the
playing of "non-celebrities"). As a dessert, I have just
received from the same source Ms Cantagrill's recordings of the three
sonatas for violin and piano by Brahms. More on that in a future blog
entry.
Comparison - the Six
Works
Barati, Kristof. 2009
Cantagrill, Marie.
[2020]
Enescu, George, 1948
Faust, Isabelle. 2011
Feng, Ning. 2016
Fulkerson, Gregory.
2007
Grumiaux, Arthur, 1960
Hadelich, Augustin.
2020
Heifetz, Jascha, 1952
Ibragimova, Alina. 2008
Kavakos, Leonidas 2020
Milstein, Nathan, 1973
Schayegh, Leila 2020
Shumsky, Oscar. 1978
St. John, Lara, 2007
Suwanai, Akiko. 2021
Suk, Josef. 1970
Tetzlaff, Christian.
1993
Weithaas, Antje.
2012-17