The viola sonata is a sonata for viola, sometimes with other instruments, usually piano. The earliest viola sonatas are difficult to date for a number of reasons:
in the Classical era and early Romantic, there were few works written with viola specifically in mind as solo instrument, and many of these, like those of the Stamitz family, may have been written for the viola d'amore, like most of their viola works—though it is now customary to play them on the viola; it was more typical to publish a work or set, like George Onslow's opus 16 cello sonatas, or Johannes Brahms's opus 120 clarinet sonatas in the late 19th century, that specified the viola as an alternate. Two early exceptions were the viola sonatas of Felix Mendelssohn (1824, posthumously published around 1981) and the opus 1 sonata of the composer Ernst Naumann (1832–1910), published in 1854.
The Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147 is the last composition by Dmitri Shostakovich. Completed in July 1975, just weeks before his death, it is dedicated to Fyodor Druzhinin, violist in the Beethoven Quartet.
The work received its official premiere in October 1975 with the performing forces of violist Fyodor Druzhinin and pianist Mikhail Muntyan. Appearing at the end of the composer's compositional output, the Sonata for Viola and Piano effectively represents the bleak, mortality-obsessed late style composition of Shostakovich.
The work unfolds in three movements, following a relatively straightforward tempo scheme of slow-fast-slow. The first movement, Andante, begins with a sparse pizzicato figure in the viola, accompanied by an equally stark piano line, followed by an explosive and wrenching middle section, and closing with a remembrance of the movement’s opening. The second movement, Allegretto, is characterized by sharp contrasting of dry, pointed figures with smooth, connected passages; the primary material of the movement was borrowed directly from Shostakovich’s unfinished opera The Gamblers (1942), granting the movement a vocal and dramatic quality.
The first Sonata for viola and piano (German:Sonate für Bratsche und Klavier), also known as Sonata in F, Op. 11 No. 4 by Paul Hindemith was composed in 1919. It is the fourth of five instrumental sonatas comprising his opus 11. This sonata and the following Op. 11 No. 5 for solo viola mark Hindemith's decision to abandon playing the violin in favor of its larger cousin.
A typical performance lasts between 15 and 18 minutes.
Movements
The sonata is in three movements, which are played without a break:
Ruhig - Sehr Breit - Im Zeitmaß - Breit
At about three minutes in length, this is the shortest of the movements, and also the freest in form and harmonic exploration, passing through roughly ten keys in the space of 41 measures. The viola introduces the main theme of the sonata in the key of F, over hushed piano accompaniment; the piano soon picks up this melody and the two instruments begin to develop a rhythmic figure that serves as a sort of coda to the theme. The piano then falls back to a subsidiary role with shimmering thirty-second note accompaniment, while the theme builds in the viola to a powerful, C-major cadenza. The music picks up again quietly in E minor on the piano, as the viola plays a decorative rhythmic figure. The theme returns quickly and is passed between the instruments in a show of virtuosity for the soloist. After a final, powerful statement, the music comes to rest in D; the piano attempts to stray to the minor mode with G-minor chords and F-naturals, but the viola insists on rising to an F-sharp. Alone now, the viola rises by whole steps to A-sharp, which is sustained enharmonically to B-flat as the beginning of the next movement.
Follow sound. Highway travel underground to find your soul. And you give a lot. But they donýt see you for the life you give alone. So go alone. Are you searching cold? Youýre willing to be more than bold for open doors. But do they pour this on? Well they are fooling no one, now is your chance to let this go. So let this go. And I fell asleep. But no one said anything to me. So I never knew. That you were lost, wondering this world without a chance of getting through. Is this just a game we play together. Do you think weýll ever know. If the proýs and conýs allow for us losing hope. You move in slow and steady motion but youýre evading none the less. You know their lives are defined by portions of progress. And I fell asleep. But I could dream that I was anything. And we brought ourselves to this place and turned and walked away to find a life thatýs so much more. You can say anything to me (repeated) Wonýt you open up your eyes. Through your window youýll see.
The “Canzonettes” return after two years with an entirely new program focusing on the birth of the Canzona inspired by early 16th-century chansons and evolving into the early 17th-centuryBaroque sonata ...The TrioSonata.
Fazil Say’s Sonata for solo viola is a two-movement memorial to the Turkish viola player Roşen Güneş, its first movement a set of variations on a insistent keening theme, while HéloiseWerner’sMixed...
Tallahassee's fall art scene is busting out with new dance moves, music and exhibits for the first official weekend of fall, which starts Sunday, ... 1 ... Friday, Sept. 20, and 2.30 p.m. Sunday, Sept ... She has created a new ballet to Jacob Grice’s ViolaSonata.
Viola player ... While Beach and Price are both represented by miniatures – the three pieces of Beach’s Op 40, and Price’s Elfentanz – Wollman and Baitel also play two much more substantial viola sonatas.
The charmer of the day was Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp, ripe with the composer’s penchant for pungent yet sexy harmonies ... A sonata for one viola and four hands (Chiang and James Dunham).
... in addition to sonatas originally written for flute by Bach both with continuo (a bass line with numbers denoting harmonies from which the harpsichordist improvises) and with obbligato harpsichord.
Much has been written about the SecondSonata, “Concord, Mass... Ives wrote optional passages for viola and flute in the “Concord Sonata” — always a happy surprise in concert — but Drury declined those.
Brattleboro Reformer
10 Jul 2024
Brattleboro Reformer
10 Jul 2024