PROGRAM NOTES ITAMAR ZORMAN, VIOLIN ADAM GOLKA, PIANO

Sunday, February 19, 2023 | 3:00 pm

Tiedtke Concert Hall

Program

Violin Sonata in G minor, D.408 (17’)

I. Allegro giusto

II. Andante

III. Menuetto – Trio

IV. Allegro moderato

Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano (33’)

I. Allegro appassionato

II. Adagio

III. Allegro

Intermission

Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Opus 108 (22’)

I. Allegro

II. Adagio

III. Un poco presto e con sentiment

IV. Presto agitato

Rondo Brilliant in B minor, D.895 (16’)

Andante - Allegro

Violin Sonata in G minor, D. 408 FRANZ SCHUBERT

The Sonata in G minor—a key with inevitable Mozartian associations—shares many traits with the A minor: a first movement whose exposition embraces three rather than two key centres (here G minor, B flat and E flat); a shapely, songful Andante that pays overt homage to Mozart (the main theme virtually quotes the Romanze of the Third Horn Concerto), a fast Menuetto with a relaxed Ländler trio, and a contredanse finale.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

In the Allegro giusto Schubert progressively transforms the brusque unison opening, first into a pensive cantabile for piano alone, and then into a suave rococo minuet. The delightful trio of the Menuetto seems like a (doubtless subconscious) recollection of the bucolic trio from Mozart’s Symphony No 39, with the melody underscored by a gurgling accompaniment from the piano-as-clarinet. The finale opens in wistful mood but quickly brightens for a popular-style tune with more than a whiff of comic opera.

- from notes by Richard Wigmore

Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1, Sz. 75

Béla Bartók (1881-1945)

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

In the 1920s Bartók’s music reached a peak of modernity and dissonance from which he retreated in his later years and which bestowed on him, in the years between the wars, a reputation for aggressive ugliness that neither Schoenberg nor Stravinsky ever matched. With hindsight we can understand that the horrified critics of the time were faced with sounds they had never expected to hear in their lives, but also that this music is far from ugly or formless. It may not display the beautiful lines we love in Mozart and Schubert, but it is full of lyrical feeling, of youthful energy, of highly inventive rhythms and harmonies, and it has a shapeliness that can quite reasonably be seen to be a legacy of the classical masters.

F. Schubert

Both of Bartók’s two violin sonatas were composed for the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arányi, Joachim’s great-niece, and it was she who gave the first performances of both works in London in, respectively, 1922 and 1923, with the composer at the piano. Both players are required to display extraordinary agility, leaping from one end of the range to the other, and the pianist is given an unending series of wide, dissonant chords. Neither player ever shares the other’s material (this is not Mozart) or even seems to react to it; they often appear to be inhabiting different musical worlds only to come together at crucial moments and to enjoy each other’s rhapsodizing in a thoroughly spontaneous and uninhibited fashion. Bartók’s extensive work collecting Hungarian folksong had a great deal to do with the rhythmic intricacies of this music, as well as its modal inflections and improvisatory feeling. The composers he most admired at that time were Debussy, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg, all of whom left their mark on this music. Yet it has much more of Bartók’s personal stamp, as if he were testing his own intuition and carving out the style that he perfected in his later works.

Please turn off cell phone and electronic devices prior to the start of this performance. The Bach Festival Society’s policies strictly prohibit photography, filming, or recording of any kind during performances without the express written permission of the Society.