Classical Music | Violin Music

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

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

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.