Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 07/14/2011, uploaded on 09/08/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Brahms completed his first violin sonata during the summer of 1879. It is thought that Brahms at least worked on three or four others; however, the op. 78 G major Sonata for violin and piano is Brahms’s first published sonata for the instrument.

The unifying element of the work is a dotted rhythm figure, which, according to Malcolm McDonald, may have been derived from the opening of Brahms’s two op. 59 songs. The violin begins with this simple motif and the rest of the first theme seems to spring from the energy of the first three notes. The piano accompaniment of the first movement surprisingly avoids contrapuntal treatment which gives added melodic freedom to the violin.

It appears that Brahms had started the Sonata in G major as a sonatina for his godson Felix Schumann who was studying the violin. When Felix died, Brahms may have expanded the work and finished it as a memorial to Robert’s and Clara’s son. In a letter to Clara dated during Felix’s fatal illness, Brahms included an early sketch of the second movement’s E flat melody saying that it expressed his feelings for Clara and Felix better than words. The central episode is a funeral march in B minor and makes prominent use of the first movement’s dotted rhythm.

The finale switches to the key of G minor and uses the opening bars of Nachklang from the op. 59 songs as its principal melody. The movement adopts a rondo form but not without irregularities. The E flat melody of the Adagio middle movement makes a return as an episode, though modified to keep in character with the finale. A coda concludes the work in which G major is finally reestablished and fragments of the slow movement’s and finale’s themes are woven together.      Joseph DuBose

Courtesy of the Steans Institute

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