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tSludWig van beethoven (1770–1827)

Sonata in D Major for Violin and Piano, op. 12, no. 1 (1797–1798) Allegro con brio Theme and variations: Andante con moto Rondo: Allegro

Erin Keefe, violin; Wu Han, piano

aaron coPland (1900–1990)Sonata for Violin and Piano (1942–1943) Andante semplice Lento Allegretto giusto

Jorja Fleezanis, violin; Gilbert Kalish, piano

INTERMISSION

leoš Janácek (1854–1928)Violin Sonata (1914–1915) Con moto Ballada: Con moto Allegretto Adagio

Ian Swensen, violin; Hyeyeon Park, piano

richard StrauSS (1864–1949)Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, op. 18 (1887) Allegro ma non troppo Improvisation: Andante cantabile Finale: Andante – Allegro

Arnaud Sussmann, violin; Gloria Chien, piano

August 4saturday, august 4, 8:00 p.m., the Center for performing arts at menlo-atherton

Program overvieWThroughout the history of Western music, composers have been drawn to the violin for its lyrical and expressive capabili-ties. Through this fascination, an unparalleled body of work has been amassed, and audiences have fallen in love time and again with the instrument’s rich oeuvre. In this special performance, Music@Menlo celebrates the violin’s history with performances of four diverse sonatas for violin and piano.

SPECIAL THANKS

Music@Menlo dedicates this performance to Michael Jacobson and Trine Sorensen with gratitude for their generous support.

carte blanche concert iv:

Violin Celebration

50 Music@Menlo 2012

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ludWig van beethoven(Born Bonn, baptized December 17, 1770; died March 26, 1827, Vienna)

sonata in D major for Violin and piano, op. 12, no. 1

Composed: 1797–1798

Dedication: Antonio Salieri

other works from this period: Serenade for Violin, Viola, and Cello, op. 8 (1797); Cello Sonatas nos. 1 and 2 (1797); Quintet for Piano and Winds, op. 16 (1797); Septet in E-flat Major, op. 20 (1799)

approximate duration: 19 minutes

In November of 1792, the young Ludwig van Beethoven traveled to Vienna, Europe’s musical capital, to study with the composer Joseph Haydn. Unfortunately, to Beethoven’s dismay, Haydn’s busy schedule as Vienna’s preeminent composer precluded him from spending any thor-ough time tutoring Beethoven. After a year of frustration, Beethoven and Haydn parted ways, and Beethoven began studying with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri, two of Vienna’s most noted compositional pedagogues at that time. During his studies, Beethoven began to establish his name within Vienna’s aristocratic circles, both as a composer and as a pianist. By 1797, Beethoven’s career was in full swing; having made a successful trip to Prague, he wrote to his brother: “I am well, very well. My art is winning me friends and respect, and what more do I want?” In 1797, Beethoven began composing his Opus 12 violin sonatas, works that demonstrate his full compositional maturity.

Though the exact genesis of Beethoven’s First Violin Sonata is unknown, the impetus for its composition could lie in Beethoven’s close friendship with Karl Amenda, a violinist and student of theology who arrived in Vienna from Courland in 1798. Amenda was employed as a musical tutor to Prince Lobkowicz’s children, and he and Beethoven soon became inseparable. Beethoven biographer Maynard Solomon described Beethoven’s friendship with Amenda:

He quickly made Beethoven’s acquaintance and soon, and in the words of a contemporary document, “captured Beethoven’s heart.” They became such inseparable compan-ions that when one was seen alone people would call out, “where is the other one?”

Written between 1797 and 1798, Beethoven’s First Violin sonata is a remarkable musical statement, different from the violin sonatas of Beethoven’s predecessors in that the two instruments are treated as equal partners. The Allegro con brio begins with a bold and stately passage, with the piano and violin in rhythmic unison, making way for a lyrical melody passed between the two voices. The movement proceeds through varying characters and developmental passages, demonstrating Beethoven’s remarkable ability to weave melodic mate-rial seamlessly through unconventional key areas, far removed from the home key of D major. The second movement is a traditional theme and variations with the theme in A major first presented in the piano. Interestingly and rather unconventionally, the first variation features the piano in the primary role with the violin accompanying it. The mood of the movement changes drastically in the third variation, where Beethoven introduces a stormy a minor variation, before the move-ment returns to the sweet buoyancy of its opening character. The final movement is a lively and playful rondo, full of subtle syncopation and offbeat sforzandos, hinting at the rhythmic complexity and rustic humor of Beethoven’s later works.

aaron coPland (Born November 14, 1900, Brooklyn, New York; died December 2, 1990, North Tarrytown, New York)

sonata for Violin and piano

Composed: 1942–1943

Dedication: Harry L. Dunham

First performance: January 17, 1944, with violinist Ruth Posselt and the composer on piano

other works from this period: Rodeo (Four Dance Episodes) (1942); An Outdoor Adventure (1938); Lincoln Portrait (1942)

approximate duration: 20 minutes

In 1931, the composer Aaron Copland met a striking twenty-one-year-old Princeton undergraduate named Harry Dunham. Described by the composer David Diamond as “the most adorable, good-looking boy,” Dunham became a close friend of Copland’s, admiring him and his artistic circle in New York before going off to serve in World War II. By 1942, with the war ravaging the European continent and Japan and a whole generation of young men from the United States sent off to serve with the Allied Forces, a palpable sense of the unknown swept across America. Artists and the larger public were left to grasp with the uncer-tain reality of whether their friends, loved ones, and acquaintances that went to serve would ever return home. The realities of the war hit Aaron Copland hard when he learned the news in 1943 that Harry Dunham had been shot down over the South Pacific. Completing his Violin Sonata that year, Copland inscribed in the score this simple dedication: “To Lt. Harry Dunham (1910–1943), a friend of mine who lost his life while on duty in the South Pacific.” Upon the premiere of the piece in 1944, the composer Virgil Thomson wrote: “[This is] one of the author’s most satisfying pieces. It has a quality at once of calm elevation and of buoyancy that is characteristic of Copland and irresistibly touching.”

The work is tinged with a bittersweet solemnity and tenderness that permeate each of the three movements. The Andante semplice begins with a slow piano introduction, evoking the spirit of a chorale and highlighted by Copland’s characteristic use of open fourths and fifths. The violin then enters with a simple tune, contrasting with the stoic chorale opening in the piano. A dialog between the piano and violin ensues with the spinning violin melody juxtaposed against the piano’s homorhythmic progression. The movement develops with the piano and violin voices in close dialog, leading to a stunning triple-forte climax, before a return of the opening material.

The second movement, Lento, is a beautifully simple elegy and features a canon between three voices: violin, piano right hand, and piano left hand. Copland brings back thematic material from the first movement in the piano, highlighted by a gentle rocking gesture in the violin. The Allegretto giusto is a rhythmic tour de force, beginning with an extended violin riff. As the movement develops, jazz influences, so prevalent in the 1940s, can be heard throughout. The tenderness of the first movement’s opening returns near the conclusion of the piece, conjuring feelings of nostalgia and longing.

Program Notes: Violin Celebration

*Bolded terms are defined in the glossary, which begins on page 107.

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leoš Janácek (Born July 3, 1854, Hukvaldy, Moravia; died August 12, 1928, Moravská Ostrava)

Violin sonata

Composed: 1914–1915

other works from this period: Perina (The Eiderdown) (1914); The Wolf’s Trail (1916); In the Mists (1912)

approximate duration: 18 minutes

As with many artists of the time, Leoš Janácek was deeply affected by World War I. With the advent of new weapons and technology, the realities of war took on new meaning, leaving much of the European population to wrestle with the frightful atrocities that were happening around them. No country in Europe was immune from the war that was raging throughout the continent. Janácek, who spent most of his career in Moravia, held deep Russian and Serbian sympathies, perhaps owing to Moravia’s close historical ties as well as its close geographic proxim-ity to both countries. A seminal moment in the conflict came on August 1, 1914, with Germany declaring war on Russia. Janácek, who had been working on a sketch of what would eventually become his Violin Sonata, inscribed this date in the manuscript of the work. Though Janácek composed the bulk of the Violin Sonata between 1914 and 1915, he tinkered with the piece until its premiere in 1922, leaving doubts about any overt connection between the piece and World War I.

Janácek’s Violin Sonata is a relatively compact work highlighted by brief melodic motifs and abrupt changes in rhythm and tempo, hall-marks of the composer’s late style. The opening Con moto begins with a declamatory statement in the violin followed by a nervous and rhap-sodic lyrical melody, spun over a trembling figure in the piano. The opening’s urgency is juxtaposed against sections of quiet repose. In the Ballada, Janácek takes the menacing sonorities of the first movement and transforms them into a warm, angelic melody in the violin, high-lighted by the piano’s oscillating broken chords.

The third movement, marked Allegretto, features the return of the first movement’s urgency, beginning with an insistent theme in the piano, played over a trill. The violin comments with a flourishing downward figure before the momentum stops with a series of bleak, punctuated chords. The movement continues with various fragmented hints at the thematic material from the two previous movements. The final Adagio movement opens with a series of ethereal piano chords, before being abruptly interrupted by an angry interjection from the vio-lin. Both the violin and piano continue, each voice restlessly insisting on its own contrasting character, until they eventually merge together with a lyrical melody, reminiscent of the second movement. The movement ends mysteriously, suspended in quiet reflection.

richard StrauSS (Born June 11, 1864, Munich; died September 8, 1949, Garmisch-Partenkirchen)

Violin sonata in e-flat major, op. 18

Composed: 1887

other works from this period: Detailed in the notes below

approximate duration: 29 minutes

Richard Strauss had a remarkably prolific musical career, both as a com-poser and as a conductor, spanning nearly eight decades. Primarily remembered as a composer of large-scale symphonic works, Strauss spent much of his early career composing music for solo piano and small chamber ensembles under the strict tutelage of his father, Franz Strauss, the Principal Horn Player in Munich’s Court Orchestra. Under his father’s watchful eye, Richard Strauss spent his childhood engrossed in the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. In 1882,

Strauss experienced an intellectual awakening upon entering the Uni-versity of Munich. There, he immersed himself in literature, art history, and philosophy, influences that would manifest themselves in many of his later works. Also around the time he entered the university, Strauss became acquainted with the influential German conductor Hans von Bülow. Bülow would serve as an important mentor figure for Strauss and would eventually give him his first opportunities to conduct.

By 1888, Richard Strauss had firmly established himself as one of the most promising young musicians of his generation. Having returned to Munich to become a conductor with the Munich Hofoper two years earlier, Strauss began to familiarize himself with the symphonic poems of Franz Liszt. After a journey to Italy in 1887, the same year Strauss completed his Violin Sonata, he wrote his first large-scale symphonic fantasy, Aus Italien. The following year, he would compose his first sym-phonic tone poem, Don Juan. The Violin Sonata would prove to be the composer’s last substantial instrumental chamber music work before he fully delved into symphonic writing.

Full of youthful energy, the Violin Sonata demonstrates the Classical influences of Strauss’s musical upbringing, in addition to foreshadowing the forward-looking and boundary-defying musical lan-guage that would become a hallmark of his later works. Throughout the sonata, the intricacies and interweaving of the violin and piano voices evoke symphonic textures. The first movement begins with a brief and heroic piano fanfare, answered quietly by the violin with a gentle mel-ody. Out of these two contrasting ideas, Strauss builds a movement of tremendous variety, from virtuosic passages for both instruments to gorgeous lyrical melodies.

The Improvisation, marked Andante cantabile, is a beautifully rendered song, emblematic of the lieder that Strauss wrote from an early age. It is possible that Strauss drew inspiration for this movement from a relationship he cultivated around this time with a young singer named Pauline de Ahna, who would eventually become his wife. The movement, in its tender lovingness, demonstrates Strauss’s ability to compose music of remarkable intimacy and subtlety. The final move-ment begins with an ominous piano introduction before launching into an energetic and heroic Allegro. The symphonic thrust of the music is highlighted by a series of virtuosic ascending sixteenth-note passages in both the violin and the piano. Elements of the extended melodies and lyricism of the first movement return, before the work closes with bristling and boundless energy.

—Isaac Thompson