Paul Juon: Chamber Music for Viola Basil Vendryes, Igor Pikayzen, William David

• Paul Juon (1872 - 1940): Viola Sonata in D Major, Op. 15:
• 1 Juon: Viola Sonata in D Major, Op. 15: I. Moderato 07:05
• 2 Juon: Viola Sonata in D Major, Op. 15: II. Adagio assai e molto cantabile 06:16
• 3 Juon: Viola Sonata in D Major, Op. 15: III. Allegro moderato 06:36
• Viola Sonata in F Minor, Op. 82a:
• 4 Juon: Viola Sonata in F Minor, Op. 82a: Moderato assai 05:36
• 5 Juon: Viola Sonata in F Minor, Op. 82a: Adagio 03:02
• 6 Juon: Viola Sonata in F Minor, Op. 82a: Tempo primo 07:07
• Romanze, Op. 7b (Version for Viola & Piano):
• 7 Juon: Romanze, Op. 7b (Version for Viola & Piano) 03:16
• Silhouettes, Deuxième serie, Op. 43, Book 3 (Version for Violin, Viola & Piano):
• 8 Juon: Silhouettes, Deuxième serie, Op. 43, Book 3 (Version for Violin, Viola & Piano): No. 1, Prélude 02:40
• 9 Juon: Silhouettes, Deuxième serie, Op. 43, Book 3 (Version for Violin, Viola & Piano): No. 2, Chant d'amour 05:28
• 10 Juon: Silhouettes, Deuxième serie, Op. 43, Book 4 (Version for Violin, Viola & Piano): No. 3a, Intermezzo 1 00:39
• 11 Juon: Silhouettes, Deuxième serie, Op. 43, Book 4 (Version for Violin, Viola & Piano): No. 3b, Intermezzo 2 01:41
• 12 Juon: Silhouettes, Deuxième serie, Op. 43, Book 4 (Version for Violin, Viola & Piano): No. 3c, Intermezzo 3 01:15
• 13 Juon: Silhouettes, Deuxième serie, Op. 43, Book 4 (Version for Violin, Viola & Piano): No. 4, Mélancholie 03:17
• 14 Juon: Silhouettes, Deuxième serie, Op. 43, Book 4 (Version for Violin, Viola & Piano): No. 5, Danse grotesque 03:08
• Trio-Miniaturen for Violin, Viola & Cello:
• 15 Juon: Trio-Miniaturen for Violin, Viola & Cello: No. 1, Rêverie, Op. 18 No. 3 03:54
• 16 Juon: Trio-Miniaturen for Violin, Viola & Cello: No. 2, Humoreske, Op. 18 No. 7 02:00
• 17 Juon: Trio-Miniaturen for Violin, Viola & Cello: No. 3, Elegie, Op. 18 No. 6 02:47
• 18 Juon: Trio-Miniaturen for Violin, Viola & Cello: No. 4, Danse fantastique, Op. 24 No. 2 01:51
• Total Runtime 01:07:38

Info for Paul Juon: Chamber Music for Viola

Paul Juon was born in Moscow, of Swiss parents, in 1872, studying there with Arensky and Taneyev; Rachmaninov, a fellow student, dubbed him ‘the Russian Brahms’. At the Hochschule der Musik in Berlin, Woldemar Bargiel, Clara Schumann’s half-brother, was his main teacher before Juon himself became a respected member of the staff. There are indeed echoes of Brahms in Juon’s early music but there is also a fondness for Russian folksong and a mastery of counterpoint, which all feed into his urgent, late-Romantic lyricism.

Relatively little has been written about the composer, pianist and violinist Paul Juon, and what literature does exist has tended to focus on two themes. The first of these is nationality, generally emphasising Juon’s connections either to Russia or to Switzerland. The second concerns Juon’s musical language, portraying him as an anachronistic holdover from the nineteenth century, continuing to compose music in a late-Romantic style all the way to the beginning of the Second World War. These are both reasonable (and perhaps inevitable) angles, but they are not the only illuminating approaches to Juon’s legacy.

Basil Vendryes, viola
Igor Pikayzen, violin (tracks 8–18)
William David, piano

Basil Vendryes
is Principal Violist of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and is a former member of the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestras. He currently serves on the faculty of the Lamont School of Music of the University of Denver. As a member of the Aurora String Quartet (1986–95) he performed recitals in New York, London and Tokyo, as well as giving the west- coast premieres of works by Richard Danielpour, John Harbison, Benjamin Lees, George Perle and many others. From 2000 to 2018 he directed the Colorado Young Sinfonia (which he also founded), comprising some of the best young talent in the Denver area.

Basil Vendryes was born in Queens, New York City, in 1961 to West Indian parents, and began his musical training in the public schools of New York City at the age of eleven. He received scholarships to the Manhattan School of Music and the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Sally O’Reilly, Francis Tursi and Heidi Castleman. He joined the San Francisco Symphony in 1982 at the age of 21 and the New York Philharmonic two years later, moving to the Colorado Symphony as Principal Viola in 1993. He has also served as guest principal violist for the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. ...

Igor Pikayzen
is establishing himself as one of the most prodigious and in-demand soloists of his generation. Since his concerto debut at the age of eight with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, he has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras in Europe, Asia and North and South America. In the last few seasons, he has given debuts, and returned to, Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Large and Small Tchaikovsky Halls in Moscow, the Congreso Nacional in Santiago and the Teatro del Lago in Frutillar in southern Chile, the Toronto Arts Centre, the Eslite Performance Hall in Taipei, the President Hall in Ankara, Le Flagey and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Le Bourget in Montreal, Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City and Cadogan Hall in London. The many festivals at which he has performed include Verbier in Switzerland, Napa Valley and Mozaic in California and Night Serenades in Georgia. In 2023 Sony Classical will release his debut album, which features the Glazunov Violin Concerto.

The grandson of the legendary Soviet violinist Viktor Pikayzen, Igor was born in Moscow and received his Bachelor’s Degree at the Juilliard School in New York, as well as a Master’s Degree and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music. He won first prize at the 2015 Edition of the International Violin Competition Luis Sigall in Viña del Mar, Chile, as well as the Wroński International Violin Competition in Warsaw in 2009, in addition to being a silver medallist at the Szeryng and Kloster-Schöntal competitions. In 2019 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Violin at the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver and he now divides his time between Denver, New York and Westport, Connecticut, where he launched an annual summer music festival, ‘Edelio’.

William David
David’s primary performance focus was as a founding member of the Ames Piano Quartet. The APQ concertised throughout the United States and internationally in Austria, France, Mexico, Taiwan and South Africa. The ensemble also spent a week performing and teaching in Havana, the first American chamber group to be invited to Cuba in over 40 years. They recorded fifteen well-received albums, with their account of the two Dvořák Piano Quartets for Dorian hailed as ‘one of the chamber music recordings of the century’ by Fanfare magazine. He was the pianist on Basil Vendryes’ Toccata Next album Three Centuries of Russian Viola Sonatas in 2021, featuring music by Bunin, Glinka, Shebalin and Sokolov (tocn 0014).

Since his relocation to Colorado, he has continued to be active in chamber music. He has collaborated with members of the Colorado Symphony and the Front Range Chamber Players, as well as faculties from Colorado State University, the University of Denver and the University of Wyoming. He received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree summa cum laude in piano performance from the University of Michigan. His major teachers there were György Sándor and Eugene Bossart.

Booklet for Paul Juon: Chamber Music for Viola