NEW REVIEWS December 2010: Pizzicato 5 stars: « Concerning the passion, you can’t find better » Los Angeles Times « huge technique, intense musicality and, yes, genuine passion. » Diapason, 5 stars: « the "Ballade" was never as rhapsodic since the Kremer version from 1976. » « A true interpretation, volcanic" The Times: « My jaw dropped at the passionate skill of her playing » « amazing CD, coltish power ...» Tages Anzeiger: « She lets the music sing and exult and weep. A sensuous intrepretation» 24 heures: « Irradiating strength, irresistible tension» « a pinnacle: capricious, light, ascensional and monumental » It was Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931), an outstanding virtuoso, and one of the greatest violinists of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, who showed that composing for unaccompanied violin had not come to a halt. In successfully reviving the genre his Six Sonatas for Unaccompanied Violin opened the way to the later sonatas by Bartók and Prokofiev, those by Hindemith and the preludes and fugues by Reger. Ysaÿe's sonatas also set a new standard by which to judge a violinist's technical proewss. On this recording, Swiss born Rachel Kolly d’Alba, plays the ex-Smith Stradivarius violin. This violin, made in 1727, is in a superb state of preservation. It has a noble, balanced sound, with a particular warmth to the high notes and an attractive, earthy sonority on the lower strings offering a wealth of expressive possibilities.