Sueye Park is no stranger to solo violin recitals. After her recording of the Paganini Caprices (BIS2282) and a recital entitled Journey through a Century (BIS2492), both critically acclaimed, she brings us another solo project, Echoes of Exile, an undertaking that finds its raison d’être in today’s very turbulent times.

Park offers us different perspectives on the topic of exile with works composed between the 1920s and 1950s, by great composers who left their country as a result of political circumstances as well as by others who went into their own inner exile. Two pieces by composers who left their native lands for artistic reasons, Enescu and Ysaÿe, frame three substantial and very contrasting works by composers forced into exile, either because their existence was threatened or because of a feeling of alienation within their respective countries. The works of Bartók and Ben-Haim show composers who, in their longing for their homelands, succeeded not only in emphasising the value of their culture even more strongly, but also in anchoring it within the environment into which they had entered. Zimmermann’s Sonata, with its unique expressive language, evokes the concerns of a young composer in the devastated Germany of the post-war period.