David
Grimal was born in Paris in 1973 and started to play the violin at the
age of five. He won the First Prize in violin and chamber music at the
Paris Conservatory in 1993 and went on to study with Regis Pasquier,
Philipp Hirschhorn (to whom this new recording is dedicated), Shlomo
Mintz and Isaac Stern. This release is his third recital for Ambroisie
featuring Bach’s iconic solo sonatas and partitas interspersed with the
world premiere recording of Kontrapartita, a piece by the exciting
young French composer, Brice Pauset, born in Besançon in 1965 and cited
by Grimal as a key influence in his understanding of Bach’s music.
Kontrapartita was inspired by the ‘morphology and the metaphorical
strength’ of Bach’s music. Pauset says this led him to transfer his
‘impressions of the relationship of the bow to the violin strings into
a piece in which bow and violin are treated as found objects’. Bach
composed his six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin in 1720, at
around the time he wrote such other works as the Brandenburg Concertos
and solo cello suites. The Sonatas each consist of four movements in a
slow-fast-slow-fast pattern; the Partitas are suites of dance
movements. This double CD release also includes a bonus DVD of David
Grimal playing Bach’s stunning Partita No.2 in D minor, featuring the
monumental and hugely popular ‘Chaconne’. These are exceptional
recordings by one of the leading French violinists of his generation.