Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 01/01/2008, uploaded on 01/21/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major (1886)            César  Franck

Allegretto ben moderato; Allegro Recitativo - Fantasia (Ben moderato); Allegretto poco mosso

César Franck was born in Liège, Belgium in 1822 and became a French citizen in 1873 where he made his home until he died in 1890. As a composer, he sought to incorporate the achievements of Romanticism into an essentially classical framework, with a harmonic idiom influenced to some extent by the chromatics of Liszt and Wagner. He was the founder of a new school of organ in France, and indeed of the whole movement that gave renewed vitality to French musical education and composition, beginning with the establishment of the National Society for French Music in 1871.

The Violin Sonata in A Major is from the last decade of his life. It is the only violin sonata work he wrote. It was written for Eugène Ysaÿe and was given to him as a wedding gift in 1886. It is a good example of Franck using the cyclic form; this means there is a theme that runs from one movement to another-both the return of music from previous movements, and the reworking of earlier themes into new contexts.  Underlying all his work is a warm religious idealism and a belief in the serious social mission of the artist.      Michael Cansfield

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.