Alina Ibragimova & Cédric Tiberghien

Alina Ibragimova (b. 1985) is internationally celebrated as one of the most important violinists of her generation. Her impressive career has already included appearances at some of the world’s leading festivals and concert venues and collaborations with celebrated orchestras and conductors. Her especially wide-ranging repertoire extends from Bach to Ligeti and Hartmann, while a number of contemporary composers have written works for her. Her performances stand out for their virtuosity, their expressivity and for a maturity and understanding of different styles rare in one so young. She often opts for important but rarely played works like Szymanowski’s works for violin and piano, her recording of which earned her a Diapason d’Or in 2009.

Accompanied by the French pianist Cédric Tiberghien, she will be performing works that occupy a special place in the violin repertoire: the sonatas for violin and piano by Debussy, Ravel and Lekeu and Szymanowski’s “Mythes”, which were inspired by ancient Greece. All the works, written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, seem to be bringing an age to a close rather than presaging what was to come, while all four composers share both a focus on showcasing the technical and expressive qualities of the instrument and an orientation towards older models from the French or German traditions. The program’s combination of the unsurpassed richness of French tone color with the Polish composer’s profoundly idiosyncratic style serves to spotlight some of the unique facets of a singular musical personality.