Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 07/06/2013, uploaded on 12/03/2013

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

The Steans Music Institute is the Ravinia Festival's professional studies program for young musicians.