Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

Sonata in Bb major, K.454 (1784)

On a Thursday in 1784 a distinguished audience, which included the Emperor Joseph, assembled in the National Court Theatre in Vienna to hear a recital of violin and piano music. The soloists on that occasion were the twenty year old Italian violin virtuoso, Regina Strinasacchi and the twenty-eight year old Mozart who had composed this sonata in Bb major especially for the concert. He had composed the sonata, but had not managed, for whatever reason, to finish writing it out, so that while Strinasacchi played from a completed violin part, Mozart worked from just an outline of the piano part (he apparently inked in the gaps sometime after the concert).

Mozart described the young Italian as ‘a very good violinist’ who had ‘excellent taste and a lot of feeling in her playing’. This rare praise from Mozart for a fellow musician was reiterated by Leopold, his father, who, when he heard Strinasacchi play in Salzburg in 1785 wrote to Nannerl (Mozart’s sister) ‘no one can play an adagio more touchingly’. Perhaps it was this respect for Strinasacchi’s musicianship that made Mozart, in this work, take a new approach to duo sonata writing.

Previously, what we would now think of as the ‘soloist’ in the duo, the violin, had held a subordinate, accompanying, position in the ensemble (even Beethoven’s early ’cello sonatas are described as for ‘piano and ’cello’). In K.454 Mozart democratises the ensemble, sharing the material equally between the protagonists.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)

Five Melodies Op. 35b

For several reasons; economic, meeting deadlines, sometimes even aesthetic; composers are frequently given to re-cycling music. Mozart’s flute concerto in D major reappears as the oboe concerto in C, Debussy allowed several orchestrations of his piano pieces and orchestrated La plus que Lente himself, while Brahms’ Op.34 F minor piano quintet has a parallel existence as the Op.34b sonata in F minor for two pianos.

Perhaps the best known example of this tendency in Prokofiev’s output is the Op.94 flute sonata, which, with some encouragement from David Oistrakh, was transformed into the violin sonata Op.94b. There are however several other examples of which the Five Melodies for violin and piano is one.

Claude Debussy (1862–1918)

Sonata in G minor

On the outbreak of the First World War Debussy moved from Paris west to the relative safety of Angers. It was at this time he planned a sequence of six works – only the first for cello and piano, the second for flute, viola (originally intended for oboe) and harp and the third for violin and piano were completed before his death. The fourth was to have been for oboe, horn and harpsichord; the fifth for trumpet, clarinet, bassoon and piano and the sixth for several instruments and piano.
Debussy was suffering from the cancer of the colon which was to kill him.

In January 1916 he wrote to Fauré "I am still, to my great regret, in the hands of some surgeons, physicians and other assassins. Although they measure out the truth to me in very small doses, I am much afraid of being laid up for one more month by these deplorable events". In the summer of that year Debussy holidayed on the Atlantic coast and began to work on the violin sonata. He worked hard and felt better for it, the work keeping him going. He still suffered pain and sleeplessness, the pain stopping him from sleeping, leaving him too tired to work.

Of the violin sonata Debussy told a colleague "I would like to hatch something fantastic, something devilish but vivacious, with much sweetness and light around it." The theme in the last movement he explained "is subjected to the most curious deformations and ultimately leaves the impression of an idea turning back upon itself, like a snake biting its own tail."

Debussy completed the sonata in the early spring of 1917, his last work before he died. He gave the first performance with Gaston Poulet on 5th May 1917.

He wrote "Up till now I’ve been horribly tired… There are mornings when dressing is like one of the labours of Hercules and I don’t know what I hope for – a revolution or an earthquake – so that I shan’t have to go on."

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)

Sonata in G major, Op. 78

Vivace ma non troppo 
Adagio 
Allegro molto moderato

The lyrical first G major sonata, opus 78, of 1879, was written in the summer of 1879 while Brahms was on holiday in Portschach on the Worthersee. Summer vacations were a particularly creative time for Brahms who would finish and commit to the page works which he had carried around in his head. He spent the first half of the day working, spending the evening with friends.

The violin sonata was one of three chamber works completed by Brahms after the violin concerto and the second symphony, the others being the piano trio in C, op.87 and the string quintet in F, op.88. He presented the work to Joachim who was working with Brahms on details of his violin concerto.

Much of the violin sonata’s thematic material is inspired by Brahms’s songs Regenslied and Nachtklang, 0p.59, nos. 3 and 4. The first movement has some of the pastoral mood of the first movement of the second symphony while the second movement is more sombre with a funeral march in the più andante. The finale starts in a minor key with a quote from Regenslied, and the main theme of the second movement reappears briefly.