SONATA FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO (2025)

Sonata for Violin and Piano (2025)

Three movements

Duration ca. 20'

The Sonata for Violin and Piano is in three movements with a total duration of about 20 minutes in performance.

The work has a dramatic arc: it beings with violin solo, muted, alone with an intense interior monologue.  From the moment the piano gracefully enters, the piano offers solace, consolation, and hope.  The “story” of the entire sonata is the journey of the violin and piano reconciling, until twenty minutes later, at the conclusion, they transcendentally break through, together, to the starry universe.    The score contains optional “stage directions” whereby the violinist can elect to dramatically emphasize its initial lonely isolation, by starting the work offstage, and only gradually proceeding onto the stage, as the piano joins in to begin their journey together.

On a more detailed level, the first movement is a rhapsodic and lyrically passionate attempt by the violin and piano to “awaken” together, that concludes however with the violin returning to its solo isolation, yet now with some acknowledgment that it is no longer entirely alone.  In addition to the dramatic arc, there are at least two main themes and some subsidiary themes that serve the movement's sonata principle derived points of departure and arrival, harmonic contrast and resolution, in constant development.

The second movement is a glimpse of another fleeting, floating, gently cascading world, starting boisterously with pizzicato (plucked and strummed) violin, then into a quicksilver, gossamer world of fleeting arpeggios, light as air and in graceful counter motion with each other.  A central section is more lyrical for both instruments, still lightly floating, then the movement comes full circle, returning first to the “quicksilver” darting to and fro, then the boisterous pizzicato but now joined by the piano in a light duet in subtly contrasting rhythms: the violin is in triple time (three pulses per measure), the piano in duple time (two pulses per measure).

The third movement finale begins with piano solo, in lone contemplation with waves of softly rocking, almost jazz influenced chords and melody.  When the violin enters, it is in an affectionate duo, in “canon” with overlapping phrases as if the instruments are speaking to one another, reunited hesitatingly, but affectionately, in brief utterances that intertwine.  This leads to a middle section with a majestic but quiet repeated bass ostinato over which the piano plays low chords suggesting a soft polytonality.  Above this the violin hovers and sings an ever-expanding freely rhapsodic wide ranging aria.  The softly rocking chords of the opening return, now with the duo uniting, a conversation that grows more fluid and intimate, ultimately growing into a soaring expanding lyricism, a peroration towards a shimmering bright world, breaking through to a higher dimension, together.

Publication at Subito Music Corp:  Forthcoming Spring 2025

Recording on First Leaf Music Records: Forthcoming 2025