Program

Beethoven Sonata in A major no. 9 "Kreutzer" op. 47

Franck Sonata in A major for violin and piano

Schumann Sonata No. 1 in a minor op. 105

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN  

Born in Bonn, Germany, baptized December 17, 1770; died in Vienna, Austria, March 26, 1827

Violin Sonata No. 9, in A, Op. 47 (Kreutzer) (1802-3)

The ‘Kreutzer’ sonata very nearly came down to us as the ‘Bridgetower.’  A handsome 24-year-old English violin virtuoso, George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower (1778-1860), of West Indian and Polish descent, gave the first performance of the work in his Vienna début.  Beethoven himself played piano at this public concert in a hall in the Vienna Augarten, in 1803.  The two musicians had met at the house of Prince Lichnowsky and Beethoven praised the English-born violinist as “a very skilled virtuoso, entirely the master of his instrument.”  Both Bridgetower and Beethoven were known for their volatile temperament and, when they became enamored of the same woman, they inevitably had a falling out.  Bridgetower proved the more romantically successful, but the price he had to pay was the withdrawal of the dedication of the sonata.  Not long afterwards, Rodolphe Kreutzer, Napoleon's chief violinist, accepted the dedication of the work, but never played it.  Berlioz (who thought the work “one of the most sublime of all violin sonatas”) reported that Kreutzer viewed the music as "monstrously unintelligible.”  Still, Beethoven’s most brilliant violin sonata was to manage well enough on its own merits, without the advocacy of its dedicatee.  

After flagging the “highly concerto-like style” of the work on the printed score, Beethoven further indicates the brilliance of the music by marking both outer movements Presto.  At the outset, an imposing four-bar introduction for the violin alone is rich in musical ideas which Beethoven explores in the fiery, incisive Presto that follows.  This is Beethoven’s most driven movement since the stormy finale of the Moonlight sonata.  After the grand scale and virtuosity of the opening movement, the central slow movement is a set of four elaborate variations of increasing ornamentation on a richly resonant melody.  The finale is a whirling tarantella, a movement that came ready-made, as the finale Beethoven had put aside from an earlier sonata.  Its brilliance and virtuosity are wholly in keeping with the resonant, heroic and virtuoso character of the ‘Kreutzer.’ 

CÉSAR FRANCK 

Born in Liège, Belgium, December 10, 1822; died in Paris, November 8, 1890.

Sonata in A, for violin and piano, M. 8 (1886)

Not wishing to repeat himself, Franck tended to write just one work in each of the major forms.  He was 57 years old when his Piano Quintet heralded a remarkable series of compositions for which he is now best remembered.  First came the Prélude, Chorale et Fugue of 1884.  This majestic piano work was followed by the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra, the D minor Symphony, the String Quartet, and the Violin Sonata we’ll be hearing today.  As in much of his music, Franck does not pursue traditional sonata procedures in his Violin Sonata.  He follows Franz Liszt’s lead by transforming a thematic idea throughout the entire work, across movements, rather than developing different ideas movement by movement.  There’s a constant state of development in Franck’s ideas, which often percolate beneath the surface as the sonata progresses.  The expansively lyrical, gently undulating violin melody of the first movement is built out of a sequence of thirds – and this interval will feature prominently throughout.

In contrast to the serenity of the opening movement, the driving second has the momentum and scale of the opening movement of a more traditional sonata.  The final two movements in Franck’s innovative design contrast the rhapsodic freedom of a Recitativo – Fantasia, which replaces the traditional scherzo, with the discipline of a canonic finale, where the familiar theme is passed back and forth between the two instruments in a virtuoso way.  Franck's heady, deeply emotional writing and piquant harmonic turns have their origins in the musical language of Wagner, particularly the harmonies of Tristan. 

The music-making of Franck’s fellow-countryman, Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, provided an incentive for the piece which Franck wrote for his friend’s wedding.  Ysaÿe gave an unofficial première on a borrowed violin in concert with the hotel piano.  He then gave the official première in December 1886 in the Musée Moderne de Peinture in Brussels during a festival of Franck’s music.  The program was long, and, after the first movement, the late afternoon light began to dim.  In the pre-electrical lighting era, artificial lighting was not allowed in the gallery.   So, with a cry of Allons! Allons!, Ysaÿe and his pianist threw aside the music and performed the last three movements from memory.  The sonata has never been out of the repertoire of violinists (and, by adoption, cellists, violists and flutists) ever since its memorable première.

ROBERT SCHUMANN

Born in Zwickau, Saxony, June 8, 1810; died in Endenich, nr. Bonn, July 29, 1856

Violin Sonata No. 1, in A minor, Op. 105 (1851)

Robert Schumann’s busy first season as music director of the municipal choir and orchestra in Düsseldorf, 1850-1, was also one of his most productive as a composer.  His Rhenish symphony was such a success at its February 6 première that a repeat was added in the following month’s subscription concert.  Large scale works for the Rhenish city’s chorus and orchestra consumed much of his creative time, and these were even interspersed with brand new, smaller scale chamber works, piano pieces and songs.  By the end of the season, however, arguments with officials and members began to foreshadow troubling relations that lay ahead.  Nevertheless, at this difficult time, in the Fall of 1851, the composer moved ahead with plans to enrich the music-making of the city by forming a private vocal group to explore Baroque and earlier choral music in weekly meetings, and with a similar society of amateur instrumentalists for chamber music readings.  Then, his creative energies zeroed in on chamber music, producing two violin sonatas and the G minor Piano Trio over a few weeks, from September through early November 1851. 

The seed for the idea of a violin sonata, a medium that Schumann had not tackled before, had recently been planted by Ferdinand David, renowned soloist and concertmaster of Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra.  “I am tremendously fond of your Fantasy Pieces for clarinet and piano [Op. 70],” David wrote to Schumann in January 1850.  “Why don’t you write something for violin and piano?  There is such a scarcity of good, new pieces at the moment, and I don’t know anyone who could do it better than you.  How wonderful it would be if you could write something that I could play for you with your wife [the well-known pianist Clara Wieck Schumann].”  Schumann responded by September 16^th the following year with the A minor Violin Sonata, Op. 105, and both performers gave private and public premières in Leipzig a few weeks later.  “In short, it delighted us,” Clara wrote in her diary . . .  without commenting on the muted audience response.  The work was published the following year.  In May 1853, the brilliant young Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim and Clara Schumann gave the sonata’s première in Düsseldorf to a more enthusiastic response.

All three movements are compact and tautly drawn, with violin and piano working together in a true duo sonata, with no feeling of competition, or a need for concert platform solo display, between the two instruments.  From the outset, violin and piano share the gently melancholy main theme, which is the main generating theme of the monothematic opening movement.  Moments of repose are infrequent, and an underlying feeling of tragic urgency prevails, compounded by the recurrent use of the mellow lower register of the violin.  The central movement cunningly and effectively combines slow movement and scherzo.  Schumann had successfully done the same thing in his Piano Concerto.  With the intimacy of the violin sonata, however, the music (as English writer Joan Chissell so beautifully put it 75 years ago) “is full of delight in simple things and comes as near to human speech as music ever can.”  The busy, running sixteenths of the rondo finale are closely woven together in imitative counterpoint and bring a return of the first movement’s urgency.  They also combine with the lyrical first movement theme in an extended coda, adding subtle unity to a delightful sonata.

— Program notes copyright © 2024 Keith Horner.  Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca