Leonidas Kavakos, Violin
Daniil Trifonov, Piano
Performers
Leonidas Kavakos, Violin
Daniil Trifonov, Piano
Program
BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata No. 4 in A Minor, Op. 23
POULENC Violin Sonata
BRAHMS Violin Sonata No. 1
BARTÓK Rhapsody No. 1 for Violin and Piano
Encore:
SCHUBERT Andantino from Violin Sonata in A Major, D. 574, "Duo"
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately 100 minutes, including one 20-minute intermission.Listen to Selected Works
At a Glance
BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata No. 4 in A Minor, Op. 23
In the words of Beethoven’s biographer Lewis Lockwood, Op. 23 “is bleak, odd, and distant, a neglected child in the family of Beethoven violin sonatas, despite its original and experimental moments.” It dates from a period of extraordinary productivity for Beethoven, which may have been fueled by an awareness of his incipient deafness.
POULENC Violin Sonata
Dedicated to the memory of Federico García Lorca (three of whose poems Poulenc would later set for voice and piano), the Violin Sonata’s three movements center around a slow, melancholy Intermezzo, which the composer described as “a kind of vaguely Spanish Andante-Cantilena.”
BRAHMS Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Major, Op. 78
In contrast to his mighty Violin Concerto in D Major, Brahms’s three sonatas for violin and piano are predominantly intimate and conversational in tone. A common strain of wistful lyricism unites the G-Major Sonata and the concerto, on which Brahms was working simultaneously in 1878.
BARTÓK Rhapsody No. 1 for Violin and Piano
Bartók mined Hungarian and Romanian folk music for the themes of his popular Rhapsody No. 1 for Violin and Piano. According to violinist Joseph Szigeti, the composer drew a distinction between “the unimaginative, premeditated incorporation” of folk material and “that degree of saturation with the folklore of one’s country which unconsciously and decisively affects the composer’s melodic invention, his palette, and his rhythmic imaginings.”