![]() ![]() The sonata ends with an Adagio final movement based on the implications of yearning contained in the piano’s opening 4-note phrase. Notable is how the piano still thinks it’s a dulcimer, buzzing away at the opening with a sonority-building left-hand trill and later hammering out its modal melody with a blunt force of attack. The Allegretto third movement is structured in the A-B-A form of a traditional scherzo, with lively rambunctious music in the A section and a B section of a more sustained lyrical quality. Harp-like piano arpeggios of the utmost delicacy give the central episode an admirable simplicity and charm. In this movement two theme threads of repeated motives are varied in turn, but at a more leisurely pace than in the previous movement. The same compositional process of continually varying a short repeated melodic motive is used in the second movement, as well, but to more lyrical ends. Notable in the piano part is the vibrating hum of the dulcimer, conveyed in tremolos and gestures reminiscent of that hammered instrument. Presented both in long lyrical quarter notes and brief, aphoristic 32nds, it is woven densely through the fabric of the entire movement in constantly varied form. Just such a motive provides the principal melodic material for the first movement of this sonata. A frequent device is the three-note “hook-motive” consisting of three notes connected by a short interval followed by a long interval. This is music of great terseness and concentration, its emotional intensity deriving from its use of short motives, often repeated, and swift changes of tempo. One hears the thrum of the Moravian cimbalom (hammered dulcimer) but filtered through a misty veil of French impressionism. Intimate and yet oddly exotic, it sits stylistically on the border between Eastern and Western Europe. The music of Janáček has many wondrously strange qualities. ![]() The Allegro vivace finale returns to the spirit of the scherzo with upward darting piano figures and a restless urge to acrobatics in the violin, all of these high jinks alternating with less frenzied moments of tuneful gaiety. Lyrical melody is indeed the initial starting point, but this movement has more on its mind than simple songfulness and plays out much in the way of a dramatic scene between violin and piano. Schubert surprises us with a moderately paced Andantino third movement instead of the traditional deeply lyrical adagio. The middle-section trio is, by contrast, coyly chromatic, all eyebrows in its pursuit of melodic nuance. #FRANZ SCHUBERT TORRENT COMPLETE FULL#Where Schubert more successfully channels Beethoven is in the Presto second movement scherzo, full of irregular phrase lengths, dynamic contrasts and harmonic surprizes, with a jumpy violin part leaping in every which direction. A reasonable facsimile of a Beethovenian development section diverts our attention to a bit of knitting that needs doing on the ravelled sleeve of care, but Schubert’s heart really isn’t into confrontation so he returns as soon as possible to the lyric impulse of the opening in a recapitulation that floats blissfully back to the world of song. The Sonata’s Allegro moderato first movement opens in a relaxed vein with a gently loping piano figure over which the violin breathes out a genial, long-limbed melody that seems never to want to end. Schubert’s Sonata in A major (1817) takes every opportunity to turn this stringed instrument into a salon vocalist in textures that highlight the violin’s capacity to sing, while not neglecting its other persona as a fleet-footed scampering elf. These youthful exploits on both the vocal and instrumental fronts are not unconnected. Fresh from single-handedly inventing the 19th-century German art song (the Lied) at the tender age of 17, he subsequently developed a teenage crush on the violin which in the space of 18 months moved him to compose no less than 4 sonatas for the instrument, as well as a set of violin duets and two works for violin and orchestra. ![]() The adolescent Schubert was a busy young man indeed. ![]()
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