Josef Suk (1874-1935)
6 Pieces Op. 7 – I. Love Song (arr. Jaroslav Kocián for violin and piano) (1891-93, arr. 1948)
The composer and violinist Josef Suk was born in Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic in 1874 and studied composition under the most famous Bohemian composer of the nineteenth century, Antonìn Dvořák. Suk was among Dvořák’s favorite students, marrying his teacher’s daughter, Otilie Dvořáková, in 1898. Suk’s grandson (and Dvořák’s great-grandson), also named Josef Suk, was a prominent twentieth-century violinist as both soloist and chamber musician. Prior to the discontinuation of art competitions at the Olympic Games in 1948, the elder Suk won the silver medal for music at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles.
As the recipient of Dvořák’s thorough instruction, Suk’s early music (including his Six Pieces, Op. 7) are predictably harmonically rich and melodically expressive, although his musical vocabulary drew more from a Brahmsian Romantic strain or even French Impressionism than it did from the Czech folk influences that had so driven his teacher. Despite the fact that Suk originally wrote his Six Pieces, Op. 7 as a collection of short character works for solo piano, the first of these, “Píseň lásky” (Love Song), is best known today as a recital piece for violin and piano. In 1948, the violinist and teacher Jaroslav Kociàn (the teacher of the younger Josef Suk) arranged the elder Suk’s tender love song, translating the solo piano work into a lush, violinistic work featuring the instrument’s lyrical capacity to its full extent.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Major, Op. 78 (1878-9)
Johannes Brahms completed the first of his three violin sonatas over two summers in the Austrian resort town of Pörtschach am Wörthersee. This sonata is also known as the “Regensonate” (Rain Sonata) because of Brahms’ use throughout of the dotted rhythm from his own earlier song, “Regenlied” (Rain Song). The text of this Lied, by German writer Klaus Groth, is a nostalgic poem describing childhood rainstorms that cut through stifling summer heat.
Pianist and composer Clara Schumann, widow of Robert Schumann and a dear friend of Brahms, wrote of this sonata that “the deepest, most tender sides of my soul vibrate to such music.” All three movements are characteristically Brahmsian in their melodic beauty and rhythmic complexity, lending the work a fervent tenderness throughout. The sonata form first movement, Vivace ma non troppo, opens with a lyrical downward gesture, followed by a tentatively hopeful rising figure, which then gives way into a flow of melody. The second theme is likewise lyrical, and the violin’s timbre dominates throughout either in melody or contrapuntal countermelody to the piano. After a halting restatement of the earlier theme, the movement closes with a brief coda that surges forward in energy. The second movement, Adagio, opens with a simple, poignant melody in the piano, in E-flat major, but quickly inflected by the minor mode with the entrance of the violin. The middle section of the movement, marked Più andante, takes a more resolute character, with dotted march-like rhythms throughout. When the opening Adagio returns, it is in both instruments with a generous warmth of sound. The final movement of the sonata, Allegro molto moderato, presents the dotted figure from the Regenlied as the rondo movement’s primary theme. After a movement in G minor, with an underlying aflightiness provided by the agile piano accompaniment, the coda brings back the gracious warmth of the second movement to close the work in G major.
Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931)
Sonata for Solo Violin in D minor “Ballade”, Op. 27 no. 3 (1923)
The Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe was born to a family of musicians and artisans in Liège. He began his career as both performer and later pedagogue, concertizing as a virtuoso violinist of great renown (he was the dedicatee of works by Franck and Chausson and his eponymous quartet premiered Debussy’s String Quartet in 1886). After decades of an extremely busy performing schedule, he turned to primarily composing and conducting owing to health concerns that affected his manual dexterity.
Among Ysaÿe’s most famous compositions are his six Sonatas for Solo Violin,Op. 27 composed in July 1923. Inspired by J.S. Bach’s six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, each is dedicated to a contemporary violinist whom Ysaÿe admired. The third sonata, subtitled “Ballade”, is dedicated to the Romanian violinist and composer George Enescu, a dear friend of Ysaÿe. The designation of “ballade” was first used for a solo instrumental composition in a narrative style by Chopin in the 1830s and subsequently taken up by numerous later Romantic-era composers. The musical form of a ballade is not fixed by convention, but rather governed by a sense of literary narrative or abstract programmatic intent – Ysaÿe’s “Ballade” is no exception. It is written in a single movement divided into two parts. The first section – Lento molto sostenuto – initially builds quickly in register and intensity through overlapping double-stops, unfurling the beginning of the narrative trajectory of the work. Following this wandering, extemporaneous-sounding episode, the second section is marked Allegro in tempo giusto e con bravura, featuring intense dotted rhythms and virtuosic double- and triple-stops. A recurring motif of dotted rhythms and heroic character marks the divisions between dazzlingly contrapuntal solo violin writing and slippery rapid triplets. The coda quickly gathers momentum into the technical fireworks that end the work.
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)
Sonata-Fantasie in G-sharp minor, Op. 19 (1892-7)
In July 1892, the young Russian composer Alexander Scriabin vividly described a dawn scene from his journey at sea aboard a steamer:
“The next day I awoke before sunrise, that is about 2:00 a.m., and immediately went up on deck, where so many marvellous impressions awaited me. In the air was such a stillness that the smoke from the funnel rose straight upwards in a dark column. The mirror-like surface of the water reflected the vault of the sky in itself, and on one half of the horizon one could not make out where this vault finished and where its depiction began. It seemed that we were in the middle of a vast sky-blue sphere…There the sun in all its splendid grandeur had already appeared on the horizon and flooded the surface of the sea with brilliance, first bright crimson, then pink, and finally silver. Meanwhile a wind had scattered the waves and enlivened the sea, which became even more attractive. The green colour of the waves mingled with the azure colour of the sky reflected in the sea, and the sun strewed golden rays over the crests of the waves which had got up. That was a play of colours and shadows, a picture of the triumph of light, the triumph of truth; the sea sparkled, the air shone, the world was filled with the enchantment of day”
Roughly contemporaneous with the composition of the first movement of his Piano Sonata No. 2 (“Sonata-Fantasie”), this scene evokes the contemplative, luminous mood with which Scriabin sought to imbue the sonata. Even at this early stage in his career, Scriabin showed a sensitivity to light and color that would influence his later experimentations with integrating color and sound together into his creative work, as he did in his tone poem Prometheus.
The sonata is in two movements, a somewhat unusual structure that indeed evokes the looser genre of “fantasy” rather than a typical three- or four-movement piano sonata. Scriabin himself was a virtuoso pianist; his great skill is evident in the technical demands on the performer in this work. The first movement is marked Andante, an uncharacteristically slow designation for an opening movement (precedent for a slow first movement notably includes Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata). The sonata form of this opening movement is built on two expansively lyrical themes, using a harmonic language displaying the influence of Chopin. The second movement, Presto, features intensely undulating crescendos and decrescendos, like the waves of the sea that the composer so evocatively described in his letter.
John Corigliano (b. 1938)
Sonata for Violin and Piano (1963)
Now in the seventh decade of a storied career, John Corigliano has received many of music’s most prestigious honors, including a Pulitzer Prize, multiple Grammy Awards, and an Academy Award for his eclectic and vibrant compositions. Born to musical parents in New York City, he studied composition at Columbia University and the Manhattan School of Music. It was his 1963 Sonata for Violin and Piano that would put the young Corigliano on the musical map when he won first prize at the inaugral Chamber Music Competition at the Spoleto Festival in 1964.
The sonata is in four movements. The first, marked Allegro, opens with a flourish of quadruple stops in the violin part, which then give way to an angular yet lucid melody. The second movement, Andantino, is as lyrical as the first is edgy. This lyricism is characterized primarily by the rich middle-to-low strings of the violin punctuated at moments of great emotional intensity by soaring moments in the upper register. As the movement continues, the tuneful melody returns in both parts in different metrical configurations. The third movement, Lento, opens with broad, dramatic chordal gestures in the piano part. The violin enters with a sinuous, almost soothing melody that then grows to dominate the texture. After another episode of dramatic chords in the piano, the violin takes over with a cadenza-like passage marked by virtuosic writing, extended runs, double stops, and an improvisatory character. The piano quietly reenters and the movement creeps to a close. A sudden contrast to this subtle fade-out, the final movement of the work, Allegro, is a swift rondo of controlled chaos. Polyrhythmic and polytonal figures are transformed and juxtaposed throughout, yielding a movement of almost unrelenting speed and virtuosity.
