Sueye Park is no stranger to solo violin recitals. After her

recording of the Paganini Caprices (BIS-2282) and a

recital entitled Journey through a Century (BIS-2492),

both critically acclaimed, she brings us another solo

project, Echoes of Exile, an undertaking that finds it's

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

Ysaye, 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

Bartok 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 it's unique expressive language, evokes the

concerns of a young composer in the devastated

Germany of the post-war period.