Sonata for Viola and Piano |
Rebecca Clarke |
| Violist, and classical composer for the viola, Rebecca Clarke may be the most important British composer of the early 1900s. Her famous Viola Sonata is post-Romantic in the German tradition, suggesting comparisons with Franck and Debussy. An impassioned Impetuoso opening introduces various recurring elements, going from tentative E minor to serene E major via constant chromatic change. A Vivace follows, a spectral jig enhanced by the violist's pizzicati, harmonics, and glissandi. A slow, seemingly serene Adagio leads to the finale through incantations of the viola alternating with returns to a quiet reverie. After a passage with the solo viola sustaining a pianissimo tremolando on the open C string, while a single decorated piano line sings above it, we finally drop into the busy, driving music of the closing Allegro. After a slow interlude, and a returning theme from the first movement, the emphatic closing bars play out. | |
Lachryme: Reflections on a
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Benjamin Britten |
| Benjamin Britten begins these variations on a theme by Renaissance composer John Dowland with the melody heard in the low part of the accompaniment, until its harmonies start to generate Britten's ten variations. They tend to be concise, most about a minute each. In his final variation, Britten quotes the entire Dowland theme from beginning to end, for the first time and in its original harmonies, although spaced differently for piano and viola. | |
| Song of the Birds |
Traditional (Catalan) |
| Originally known as "El cant dels ocells", this old Christmas song was made famous by cellist Pablo Casals about his native Catalonia. The song is harmonically complex. It maintains its key, G minor, for the first three lines, though with a harmonic minor scale that gives it a moment of Middle Eastern color. It then rests startlingly on G major before broadening out into a succession of optimistic and open major keys, before returning to end in G minor. | |
| Carenza Jig |
György Kurtag |
| For Hungarian composer György Kurtág, words are used sparingly, as he says "one can make music out of almost nothing”, or that “ one note is almost enough to sum up the essence of a sensation, a sob, a shriek, a happening, a gesture. And even one instrument may be enough”... He never taught composition, but has coached chamber music and piano with an almost unparalleled energy throughout his life. His teaching of chamber music is legendary in Hungary and abroad. So the Carenza Jig is his message here, no need for words. | |
| Song of the Black Swan | Heitor Villa Lobos |
| This flowing, impressionistic duet is extracted from the symphonic poem Naufragio de Kleônicos, and reveals Villa-Lobos' affection for the cello (replaced here by a viola). The music itself is very simple in conception: the piano arpeggiates in an endless series of chords, some sweet, some spicy, but always favoring the upper registers, while the viola sings plaintively, without interruption as well. The resulting texture is reminiscent of Ravel and Debussy, but readily announces itself as a work of Villa-Lobos, especially in its fusion of lyricism and sensuality. | |
| Sonata in A minor for Arpeggione and Piano, D.821 | Franz Schubert |
The Sonata was written by Franz Schubert in Vienna in 1824, and is a rare surviving composition for the arpeggione (essentially a bowed guitar), mostly heard today in transcriptions for cello and piano, or viola and piano, and so arranged after the arpeggione vanished. The Allegro moderato begins with a wistful melody that most will find familiar, while the second theme appears and moves in gentle gusts of sixteenth notes. At the beginning of the development, the piano again has the ?rst theme (this time in octaves) with a simple accompanimental ?gure in the viola. A relatively brief Adagio, cast in the dominant key of E major in slow triple meter, is an extended cantilena, likely intended to have shown off the arpeggione’s upper register in its first part. Uniquely in all of Schubert’s sonatas, there is no break between the slow movement and the ?nale, but another quasi-recitative (reminiscent of the one in the ?rst movement), as a lead-in. The ?nale proper, marked Allegretto, is cast in rondo form, unusually for Schubert. Two extended minore episodes (in D minor, then in A minor, and targeting the arpeggione’s abilities) are heard first, before the main theme finally reenters to restore balance and joy after the two stormier episodes in minor keys. |
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