SCHUMANN Violin Sonatas No. 1, Op. 105 No. 2, Op. 121 Intermezzo from F. A. E. Sonata Ilya Kaler, Violin Boris Slutsky, Piano Robert Schumann (181 0 - 1856) Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 105 Violin Sonata No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 121 Intermezzo in F Major from F. A. E. Sonata Robert Schumann must seem in many ways typical of the age in which he lived, combining a number of the principal characteristics of Romanticism in his music and in his life. Born in Zwickau in 1810, the son of a bookseller, publisher and writer, he showed an early interest in literature and later made a name for himself as a writer and editor of the Neue Zeitschrift fijr Musik, a journal launched in 1834. After a period at university to satisfy the ambitions of his widowed mother, but still showing the wide interests of a dilettante, Schumann was able to turn more fully to music under the tuition of Friedrich Wieck, a famous teacher, whose energies had been largely directed towards the training of his beloved daughter Clara, a pianist of prodigious early talent. Schumann's own ambitions as a pianist were to be frustrated by a weakness of the fingers, the result, it is supposed, of mercury treatment for syphilis, which he perhaps had contracted from a servant-girl in Wieck's employment. Nevertheless he wrote a great deal of music for the piano during the 1830s, much of it in the form of shorter genre pieces, often enough with some extra-musical, literary or autobiographical association. The end of the decade brought a prolonged quarrel with Wieck, who did his utmost, through the courts, to prevent his daughter from marrying Schumann, bringing in support evidence of the latter's allegedly dissolute way of life. He might have considered, too, a certain mental instability, perhaps in part inherited, which brought periods of intense depression. In 1840 Schumann and Clara married, with the permission of the court. The year brought the composition of a large number of songs and was followed by a period during which Clara encouraged her husband to tackle larger forms of orchestral music, while both of them had to make adjustments in their own lives to accommodate their differing professional requirements and the birth of children. A relatively short period in Leipzig was followed, in 1844, by residence in Dresden, where Wagner was now installed at the Court Theatre, his conversation causing Schumann to retire early to bed with a headache. In 1850 the couple moved to Dusseldorf, where Schumann had been appointed director of music, a position the demands of which he was unable to meet, a fact that contributed to his suicidal depression and final break-down in 1854, leading to his death in the asylum at Endenich two years later. Schumann's first years in Dijsseldorf were fruitful, at least as far as composition was concerned. In 1851 he wrote his third symphony, the Rhenish, his third piano trio, the wonderfully evocative viola Marchenbilder, and his first two violin sonatas, the second allegedly an attempt to succeed where he felt, in the earlier work, that he had failed. In neither does Schumann fully exploit the technical possibilities of the violin, preferring rather to use the instrument at its most expressive in music that has much in common with the shorter instrumental pieces of this period. The A minor Sonata starts with an expressive first movement, the passionate theme played first in the lower register of the violin. It is from this principal theme that the rest of the movement develops. The second movement seems to have something of the narrative content imolicit in the Marchenbilder. A aentle Allearefto narrative frames a livelier that seems to compleme~it. The key shifts briefly from F major to F minor before the return of the first material. The following passage adds further excitement to the story with an emphatic ending, leading to the re-appearance of the music with which the movement had opened. The piano starts the rapid and agitated melody, at once imitated by the violin, in the third movement. There are references to the first movement in music that preserves its continuing tension to a determined conclusion. Schumann dedicated the second of his two completed violin sonatas to Ferdinand David, Mendelssohn's lieutenant in Leipzig. The slow introduction to the first movement of the D minor Sonata starts with chords from both violin and piano. The main section of the movement states the principal subject in a sonata-allegro form structure that never loses its sense of expressive narrative, with a less vigorous but strongly felt second theme. The B minor second movement starts energetically, with a second section in F sharp minor. A return of the first section is followed by a third of contrasting rhythm and the re-appearance of elements of the first leading to a B major conclusion. The slow movement has a principal theme played pizzicato by the violin, followed by a bowed version to a more elaborate piano accompaniment. Violin double- stopping appears in the next version of the theme. A more elaborate and dynamically varied treatment of the material leads to a double-stopped form of the theme, with piano arpeggios. The key of G major is now replaced by the original D minor for the vigorous last movement. As in the earlier sonata, the piano has a considerable part to play, in figuration very characteristic of Schumann and proceeding here to a positive D major conclusion. In 1853 Brahms met Schumann for the first time, introduced by his young violinist friend, the virtuoso Joseph Joachim. Schumann was deeply impressed by Brahms, lavishing praise on his work and the promise he perceived. In honour of Joachim he suggested a composite violin sonata to which he himself contributed an lntermezzo and a Finale, with a first movement from Albert Dietrich, a young member of Schumann's circle who enjoyed a long subsequent career as a conductor and composer, and a Scherzo from Brahms. The motif on which the movements by Schumann and Dietrich were based was derived from Joachim's motto, Frei aber einsam, Free but alone, which provided the notes F, A and E. Schumann later wrote two further movements to replace those by Dietrich and Brahms, making a third complete sonata. The lntermezzo is a movement of expressive charm and in no way justifies the misgivings of Clara Schumann, who prevented the publication of this and a number of other works of Schumann's final years of sanity, fearing that they might in some way seem musically inadequate. llya Kaler The Russian violinist llya Kaler was born in 1963 in Moscow and studied there at the Conservatory under Leonid Kogan and Victor Tretyakov. In 1981 he won the Grand Prize at the Genoa Paganini Competition and in 1985 the Gold Medal at the Sibelius Competition in Helsinki, with a Special Prize for his performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto. The following year he won the Gold Medal at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition. He has appeared as a soloist with the most distinguished Russian orchestras and abroad with orchestras of Eastern and Western Europe and in the United States, while as a recitalist he has performed in the major cities of Europe, in the Far East and throughout the former Soviet Union. Boris Slutsky Boris Slutsky had his early musical training at the Gnesin Institute in Moscow, continued in the United States at the Juilliard School in New York and at the Manhattan School. After settling in America in 1977, he won first prize, audience prize and the Wilhelm Backhaus Award at the University of Maryland International Piano Competition and has since won further prizes in Italy, Canada and elsewhere. His concert career has brought appearances with major orchestras and solo and chamber music recitals in the Americas and in Europe and a series of recordings. He is on the teaching Faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Robert Schumann Violinsonate Nr. I und Nr. 2 Wenn ihn einmal das Fieber gepackt hat, produziert Robert Schumann Meisterwerke gewissermaOen am FlieBband. So geschieht es beispielsweise zu Beginn seiner kompositorischen Laufbahn auf dem Gebiet der Klaviermusik, dann wieder, als er die Gattung des Liedes fur sich entdeckt und gleich ganze Serien groOartiger Zyklen formlich herausschleudert. Und derartige Phasen erleben wir bis zum SchluO - eine Tatsache, die das Gerucht von der geistigen "Umnachtung" des Komponisten ad absurdum fuhrt. In der ihm eigenen Geschwindigkeit verfaRt Robert Schumann im Herbst 1851 auch die Violinsonaten a-moll op. 105 und d-moll op. 121- letztere ubrigens, weil ihm nach eigener Aussage der erste "Versuch" nicht recht gefallen habe. GewiO werden wir uns diesem Urteil nicht anschlieOen: Denn schon der "leidenschaftliche Ausdruck", mit dem der erste Satz des Opus 105 lossturmt, ist eine seelische Zustandsbeschreibung, die kaum mitreiOender sein konnte. Weite Bogen, kraftigste Kontraste zeugen von der typisch schumannesken Spontaneitat, von der auOerordentlichen schopferischen Kraft, mit der der Komponist innerhalb weniger Tage wahre Wunder vollbringen konnte. Anstelle eines echten langsamen Satzes IaOt Schumann ein apartes, von einem rhythmisch markanten Motiv gepragtes Allegretto folgen. Den AbschluB bildet ein wiederum breit angelegtes Allegro, in dem - ahnlich wie im Kopfsatz - die dramatische Bewegung vorherrscht. Klavier und Violine prasentieren das unruhige Sechzehntelthema gewissermaOen als Kanon. lmmer wieder wechseln die Einsatze zwischen den beiden Instrumenten, als wollte man sich gegenseitig ins Wort fallen. Das Ergebnis dieses Verfahrens ist ein leidenschaftlicher, auflerordentlich dichter Dialog, der mit einer geradezu konzertanten Gebarde beendet wird. Kaum ist die Partitur der ersten Violinsonate abgeschlossen, da macht sich Robert Schumann an die Arbeit des Schwesterwerkes, das bereits nach einer Woche vollendet wird.