Natural born fiddler

A musical portrait of the young Valery Sokolov, the Ukrainian violin prodigy

"I had nothing of the child prodigy, I was nothing special. At the age of five, I was given a violin and told to play." It is in such terms that the very young Valery Sokolov, born in 1986 in Karkhov in the Ukraine, talks to Bruno Monsaingeon about his calling. Trained in his native town, he later perfects his technique at the Yehudi Menuhin School in London where Monsaingeon discovers him in 2003: "I had the feeling of complete instrumental ease, and above all, of a complete abandonment to the flow of the music he played. I told myself that it was essential to capture as soon as possible the fresh flow of Valeriy Sokolov's immense talent…"

To do so, Monsaingeon moves quickly, he records the young musician in concert in 2004, at the Saint-Pierre des Cuisines Auditorium in Toulouse where he is accompanied by pianist Svetlana Kosenko. From Beethoven to Prokofiev, from Ysaÿe to Bartók, from Saint-Saëns to Dvorak, Valeriy Sokolov expresses every facet of his budding art.