Echoes of Exile

Sueye Park is no stranger to solo violin recitals. After herrecording of the Paganini Caprices (BIS-2282) and arecital entitled Journey through a Century (BIS-2492),both critically acclaimed, she brings us another soloproject, Echoes of Exile, an undertaking that finds it'sraison d'être in today's very turbulent times.Park offers us different perspectives on the topic of exilewith works composed between the 1920s and 1950s, bygreat composers who left their country as a result ofpolitical circumstances as well as by others who wentinto their own inner exile. Two pieces by composers wholeft their native lands for artistic reasons, Enescu andYsaye, frame three substantial and very contrastingworks by composers forced into exile, either becausetheir existence was threatened or because of a feeling ofalienation within their respective countries. The works ofBartok and Ben-Haim show composers who, in theirlonging for their homelands, succeeded not only inemphasising the value of their culture even morestrongly, but also in anchoring it within the environmentinto which they had entered. Zimmermann's sonata,with it's unique expressive language, evokes theconcerns of a young composer in the devastatedGermany of the post-war period.