Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 10/26/2004, uploaded on 01/16/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

The Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major was César Franck’s only sonata for the instrument. It has become a staple of the violin repertoire and stands alongside the Symphony in D minor as one of the composer’s finest and most beloved compositions. Though composed in 1886, the sonata’s genesis may have actually taken place nearly three decades earlier in 1858. Franck had promised a violin sonata for Cosima von Bülow, the daughter of Franz Liszt and later the wife of Richard Wagner. The proposed sonata never materialized but it is possible that whatever shards remained, if any, from Franck’s work may have become the basis of the present work. Franck presented the A major sonata to the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe as a wedding present on September 26, 1886. After a hurried rehearsal, Ysaÿe and pianist Léontine Bordes-Pène performed the sonata for the other wedding guests during Ysaÿe’s nuptial day. Its official premiere public performance was given by Ysaÿe and Bordes-Pène a few months later on December 16 at the Musée Moderne de Peinture at Brussels. The sonata was the last item on a rather lengthy program that had begun at 3pm. The setting sun and the gallery authorities’ refusal to allow artificial light threatened to leave Franck’s masterpiece unperformed. Yet, according to Vincent d’Indy, who was present at the performance, as the light continued to fade, Ysaÿe and Bordes-Pène performed the last three movements of the sonata from memory. The Violin Sonata has since appeared in transcriptions for many instruments, but only that for cello earned Franck’s official endorsement.

Adhering to both the Classical Viennese tradition Franck gravitated towards in his final years and his luscious Romantic harmonic language, the Violin Sonata spans a four-movement design of dramatic proportions. A lyrical Allegretto opens the sonata, supplanting the usual quick-paced first movement, but by no means diminished in intensity or profundity. Turbulence arrives, however, in the Allegro second movement, opening with a furious introduction from the piano, followed by a passionate melody from the violin. The length of this movement and the weightiness of his principal ideas give it the impression of an opening sonata-allegro movement, leaving one to wonder if the preceding Allegretto was not but a protracted introduction. Serving as the sonata’s slow movement is the Recitativo-Fantasia. Certainly the most striking movement, it is a piece of great depth and emotion and the darkening gloam in which it received its first performance could only have enhanced its gloomy and ghostly quality. The twilight of the third movement, however, is gloriously dispelled in the bright opening theme of the finale. Yet, even with this cheerful introduction, the last movement is not without its intense and passionate moments brought on by the intermingling of ideas from the previous movements. In radiant glory, the sonata comes to a brilliant and triumphant close.         Joseph DuBose

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Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major    César Franck                               

Aside from the Symphony in D minor, which has become a staple of the concert hall, the Violin Sonata (1886) is Franck's best-known work, and rightly so: It is a superb synthesis of Franck's own uniquely rich harmonic language and thematic cyclicism and the Viennese Classical tradition that he came to hold so dear in the later stages of his career. The Sonata was composed as a wedding present for violinist Eugene Ysaÿe, who performed it at his matrimonial celebrations on September 26, 1886.

The Sonata begins with a poetic Allegretto moderato in 9/8 time. After a tentative opening gesture, the music builds to a compelling fortissimo climax. As the violin rejoins the discourse, the drama ebbs to a dolcissimo reprise of the opening. Another climax, this time moving toward the tonic A major, follows, and the movement ends with a brief codetta.

The second movement opens with a low sixteenth note rumbling in the piano that soon overflows into a full-blooded Allegro. The syncopated main tune is taken over by the violin, and things settle into a quasi lento interlude and some fragmented episodic reconstructions of the movement's three main motivic strands. A recapitulation follows, and the increasingly tumultuous coda, provides an electrifying finish.

At the opening of the third Recitativo-Fantasia movement, the piano makes an introductory gesture that draws on the same rising-third gesture that provided the first movement's main theme. The tranquil, almost other-worldly, middle section introduces the two striving themes with characteristic triplet-rhythm accompaniment, which will return in the glorious Finale.

The happy opening of the Finale immediately dispels any sadness left by the third movement. The first melody, treated in exact canonic imitation between the instruments, is original to the last movement, the first of the two melodies from the central section of the third movement also makes a return. After an appropriate mingling of these ideas - and a colorful interlude built on a subsidiary motive from the opening movement - a tremendous buildup climaxes in the passionate fortissimo return of the second of the two third-movement themes and is immediately repeated a whole step higher. As the dam bursts the opening canonic theme returns once more to bring the work to a cheerful close.    Kai Gleusteen

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.