Friday 30 July, Champs Hill 7.30pm – 9.15pm Johan Dalene (violin) with Nicola Eimer (piano) Violin Sonata No. 2 in G major Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) 1 Allegretto 2 Blue moderato 3 Perpetuum mobile Allegretto Ravel completed several works for the violin including this eventful Violin Sonata in G. It evolved gradually over a four-year period from 1923 and was written during visits to his country home in the Ile-de-France. Seeking technical advice from his friend the violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, he wrote of the Sonata ‘It won’t be difficult, and it won’t sprain your wrist’. Yet, it’s a work not without challenges notably in the ‘steeple chase’ last movement where violin and piano hurtle along with a breathless, unceasing momentum, building to a climatic finish. One might recognise certain rhythmic elements that would later feature in his Piano Concerto in G written a few years later after a hugely successful tour to America. It was in the bars of Paris where he first heard Dixieland bands and his growing awareness of jazz saturated the sonata’s blues-style second movement which is launched by echoes of a banjo. Thereafter Ravel unveils a series of jazz idioms including schmaltzy glissandi, snappy syncopations and hints of ragtime, the violin’s last note closing on the 7th degree of the scale. Stylistically apart, the first movement is marked by an ethereal beauty, its lean textures and stark lyricism deriving from linear and often independent instrumental writing. Of this latter quality Ravel considered the piano and violin ‘essentially incompatible instruments’. Sospiri, Op. 70 Edward Elgar (1865-1934) Music for violin and piano occupied Elgar’s entire creative life from his first published work, a Romance in E minor up to the final harvest of works from 1918 which includes a fine Violin Sonata. Sospiri (Sighs) was the composer’s last short piece for violin and piano and belongs to the first months of 1914. The work’s completion so close to the beginning of the Great War may suggest some prescience, but its grave beauty and heartache was possibly prompted by the death of Julia Worthington, an American hostess and intimate friend of the Elgar’s whose ‘soul’ was enshrined in the Violin Concerto just a few years earlier. Sospiri has the profundity of one of the composer’s great symphonic Adagios, its eloquence and Mahlerian intensity underline a characteristic nobilemente. From 6 Pieces for Violin and Piano, Op. 79 Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) No 1 Souvenir No 5 Tanz-Idylle No 6 Berceuse Like Elgar, Sibelius contributed a single violin concerto to the repertoire and numerous occasional pieces for the instrument on which the composer aspired to be a virtuoso. With the onset of the Great War, Sibelius's lucrative contracts with the German publishers Breitkopf & Härtel were suspended and his income was severely reduced. Consequently, he turned to writing saleable and undemanding salon pieces for violin and piano, and it is no surprise that most of his wartime compositions are for this combination. Regardless of negative appraisal from critics, Sibelius insisted each these works possessed intrinsic merit. If the six pieces belonging to Op. 79 don’t quite rise to the level of inspiration of the better- known orchestral Humoresques, they offer a series of unassuming yet admirably crafted fleeting impressions, undeniably elegant and tuneful, perfectly serving the market for which they were intended. The gently expressive miniature that is the ‘Berceuse’ (1917) would also serve as an encore, nothing flamboyant but possessing a haunting beauty regardless of its flimsy material. There’s no less refinement in the restless ‘Tanz-Idylle’ in which the harp-like piano part anchors solo writing that is by turns delicate and fiercely intense. By far the more ambitious of these pieces is the unashamedly romantic ‘Souvenir’, complete with a cadenza that puts paid to Arnold Bax’s censure of these works as mere ‘trifles’. Violin Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 94bis Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) 1 Moderato 2 Scherzo: Presto 3 Andante 4 Allegro con brio If one had to make an educated guess when Prokofiev wrote this sunny Violin Sonata, it is unlikely one would choose the turbulent years of the Second World War. Yet it dates from 1943 and was originally conceived as a sonata for flute. Prompted by the violinist David Oistrakh, Prokofiev rearranged the work for violin, for which it is better known. While its relaxed manner belies the chaos of the times it was completed some seven hundred miles to the east of Moscow at Perm, amid the Ural Mountains where he and members of the evacuated Kirov ballet were making plans for his Cinderella. A sense of disquiet is not entirely absent from the sonata form first movement which, allowing for brief aggressive outbursts, mostly follows an elegant neo-classical path with an autumnal lyricism. There follows a wonderfully capricious ‘Scherzo’, its impish scales and sardonic exchanges between piano and violin eventually interrupted by a plaintive central panel. The impulsive mood soon returns, and the catch-me-if-you-can acrobatics finally come to rest as if tumbling down a flight of stairs. Dreamy introspection colours the ‘Andante’ where Mozartian eloquence (a blithe triadic theme) yields to bluesy languor, the first theme returning in new ‘clothes’ at the end. The finale explodes with unmistakable chutzpah and after a rapt slower passage, the return of earlier high jinks enables instrumental virtuosity to take centre stage. Generously sponsored by The Bowerman Charitable Trust .