Ilya Gringolts made
his public performance debut at the
age of eleven, having had his first
violin lesson when aged five. In 1998,
aged sixteen, he was the youngest-ever
winner of the International Violin Competition
"Premio Paganini" and was hailed as
the best interpreter of Paganini's Caprices.
In 1999 he entered the Juilliard School
in New York to study with Itzhak Perlman,
with whom he worked until 2002. He has
since performed with many North American
orchestras, performed at the "Ground
Zero" concert, and played at the BBC
Proms in 2002. He is one of Radio 3's
New Generation Artists and broadcasts
regularly on the BBC.
An impressive profile
from such a young performer (just in
his twenties) suggests thrills in store.
This may well be in the more modern
repertoire where attack and emotion
can have full rein, but I am afraid
that in the Bach unaccompanied violin
works, that approach comes sadly amiss.
These Sonatas and Partitas are rightly
regarded as the summit of a violinist's
achievement; they require supreme control,
not only of one's technique but of one's
emotions. This does not mean that they
are sterile, mathematical works; far
from it. They need playing in the genre
in which they were written but also
the most delicate of nuances in their
interpretation. In the right hands one
can sense the harmonic background without
actually hearing it. In these aspects
Gringolts is certainly not helped by
the recording which is over-close and
also reverberant. I suspect he uses
steel strings rather than gut, all of
which produces an unpleasant stridency
to the tone. Add to this his tendency
to use heavy-bowed accentuation on the
more marcato passages, not to
mention some laboured double-stopping,
the music ceases to flow and one loses
that sense of background harmony. Certainly
his technique is fully equal to the
demands of the music, but the soul within
the dazzling fiddlistics is lacking.
As a comparison after a disappointing
session listening, I turned to Grumiaux
on a Philips Duo (438 736-2PM2) (for
which one gets the whole six partitas
and sonatas at a cheaper price) and
my faith in Bach was immediately restored
in full measure. Add to this that the
recording is immeasurably better, there
is not really any competition. In a
final deciding factor, the booklet is
devoted to a rather trite "interview"
between Gringolts and Jeremy Nicholas;
a short history of the works and their
place in Bach's repertoire would I think
have been far more appropriate.
In short, a disappointing
disc from an artist who possibly suffers
from the modern-day "hype" leading to
increased expectations. Give another
ten to fifteen years and try again.
John Portwood
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Ilya Gringolts, violin 
