Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 11/14/2006, uploaded on 01/22/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Brahms completed his first violin sonata during the summer of 1879. It is thought that Brahms at least worked on three or four others; however, the op. 78 G major Sonata for violin and piano is Brahms’s first published sonata for the instrument.

The unifying element of the work is a dotted rhythm figure, which, according to Malcolm McDonald, may have been derived from the opening of Brahms’s two op. 59 songs. The violin begins with this simple motif and the rest of the first theme seems to spring from the energy of the first three notes. The piano accompaniment of the first movement surprisingly avoids contrapuntal treatment which gives added melodic freedom to the violin.

It appears that Brahms had started the Sonata in G major as a sonatina for his godson Felix Schumann who was studying the violin. When Felix died, Brahms may have expanded the work and finished it as a memorial to Robert’s and Clara’s son. In a letter to Clara dated during Felix’s fatal illness, Brahms included an early sketch of the second movement’s E flat melody saying that it expressed his feelings for Clara and Felix better than words. The central episode is a funeral march in B minor and makes prominent use of the first movement’s dotted rhythm.

The finale switches to the key of G minor and uses the opening bars of Nachklang from the op. 59 songs as its principal melody. The movement adopts a rondo form but not without irregularities. The E flat melody of the Adagio middle movement makes a return as an episode, though modified to keep in character with the finale. A coda concludes the work in which G major is finally reestablished and fragments of the slow movement’s and finale’s themes are woven together.      Joseph DuBose

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Sonata in G Major, Op. 78                   Johannes Brahms

1.   Vivace ma non troppo; 2. Adagio; 3. Allegro molto moderato

Brahms' mastery of string chamber music was hard-won. Successive works were re-written, transposed and even destroyed in an unrelenting quest for technical and formal perfection. A single Scherzo for violin and piano is all that has survived from some 70 string chamber works which Brahms deemed fit only to be burned. The G Major Violin Sonata, known to us as the First, was actually Brahms' fifth attempt. In this sonata two influences may have contributed to the music's relaxed, confident manner - the profound integrity and lyrical playing of Joseph Joachim, the Hungarian virtuoso who inspired all of Brahms' mature string writing, and the scenic surroundings of Portschach in Austrian Carinthia. The holiday atmosphere of this mountain resort seems to have evoked in Brahms a particularly sunlit mood; in the two preceding summers there he had produced two of his most joyful orchestral works, the Second Symphony (1877) and the Violin Concerto (1878). The G Major Violin Sonata was written in the summer of 1879 and premiered in Vienna that November.

The sonata is set in three movements, without a scherzo. The opening sonata-form Vivace non troppo sets a pastoral atmosphere from the very beginning, although its development section provides the only truly stormy passage in the whole work. The violin takes the leading role almost throughout, and Brahms skillfully blends its cantabile with graceful accompaniment figures and subtle counterpoint for the piano. The noble Adagio allows Brahms the greatest freedom of rhythm and the opportunity to plumb the profoundest emotional depths. The dignified opening melody is presented in rich harmony; it is followed by an agitated central section, and a quiet close with a mysterious transformation of material from earlier in the movement. The Allegro molto finale opens with three repeated notes in reference to the first movement, although the movement's true subject is the melody of Brahms' song Regenlied, written in 1873. The melody provides the basis of a flowing g minor rondo. The theme of the Adagio returns and resolves the movement into a warm G major, bringing the sonata to a perfectly measured close.      R.G.Bratby 1997

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.