This modest homage to Ysaÿe’s style of writing is scored for unaccompanied violin, and structured as a theme and variations. The variations (three in number) are based on the Ukrainian folk song “Vziav bï ïa bandura” (“I would take up a zither”). The shape of the Fantaisie was very much inspired by Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst’s The Last Rose of Summer. After a short introduction, where the theme is exposed in reverse, the folk song is presented with an accompaniment of pizzicato in the left hand.
The first variation is introduced by double-stops and has a Slavic-dance character that alludes to my heritage. The second variation is a typically violinistic passage where I tried to find my own expression in polyphony. It features bariolage (fast passagework played on open and stopped strings in alternation) with extended voicing and a chorale that I felt would be a nice transition to another theme incorporated there: a melody that was sung during the demonstrations of support for the victims of the Maidan massacre in 2014.
The finale is rather light-headed, with harmonies and rhythms inspired by Kreisler and Ysaÿe that build up to a joyful ending that aims to leave hardship in the past and create space, where possible, for idealism and optimism.
—Marc Bouchkov
A magisterial compendium of compositional styles and instrumental techniques, Bach’s six sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin have delighted listeners—and challenged performers—ever since their rediscovery in the Bach revival of the mid–19th century. A number of German and Italian composers wrote solo violin music in the 17th century, but never on the scale that Bach attempted. Nor had anyone achieved such breathtaking contrapuntal and harmonic complexity with a single melodic instrument. As Johann Nikolaus Forkel observed in 1802, Bach “has so combined in a single part all the notes required to make the modulations complete that a second part is neither necessary nor desirable.” In arranging the D-Minor Chaconne for piano left hand, Brahms marveled that on “one stave, for a small instrument” Bach had inscribed “a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings.”
Bach’s D-Minor Partita starts out as a conventional four-dance suite with a plangent, dark-hued Allemande, a somewhat lighter-spirited Courante, a grave and intense Sarabande, and an agile, high-stepping Gigue. All begin with the same sequence of chords, whose slow-moving base line (D, C-sharp, D, B-flat, A) serves as a kind of a unifying head-motive. This recurring bass pattern is easiest to hear in the concluding Chaconne, a highly elaborate version of a popular dance imported from Latin America by way of Spain and originally performed by voice and guitar. Often played on its own, the Chaconne is one of Bach’s noblest and most celebrated creations. Its monumental architecture rests on a simple but sturdy foundation: The ever-changing ostinato bass provides the harmonic underpinning for a series of 32 stunningly imaginative variations, ranging in length from four to 12 bars.
Chausson is remembered today chiefly for a single work: his rhapsodic and achingly beautiful Poème for violin and orchestra, written for Belgian virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe and partly inspired by Ysaÿe’s own richly expressive Poème élégiaque. In his all-too-short lifetime, however, Chausson was regarded as a leading light of the French Romantic school, destined to follow in the footsteps of his teachers, Franck and Massenet. As a young man, Chausson fell under the spell of Wagner and even spent his honeymoon at Bayreuth; his opera Le roi Arthus (King Arthur) translates the medieval Arthurian romances into an up-to-date Wagnerian sound world. Later—prodded by his sometime friend and protégé Debussy—he did an about-face and adopted the more concise style exemplified by the serenely “classical” Piano Quartet and his miniature lyrical drama Chanson perpétuelle, the last work he completed before his untimely death in a bicycle accident at age 44.
Chausson originally intended to call his masterpiece Le chant de l’amour triomphant (The Song of Love Triumphant) after a supernatural short story by Turgenev about a lovers’ triangle set in Renaissance Italy. (The composer was on close terms with both the Russian writer and his paramour, the celebrated operatic diva Pauline Viardot.) In the end, Chausson jettisoned any overtly programmatic elements and produced an abstract tone poem suffused in equal parts with passionate yearning and elegiac lyricism. Like his earlier Concert for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet, Op. 21, the Poème exploits the purity of tone, liquid phrasing, and tasteful reticence associated with its dedicatee, Ysaÿe. The work’s feverish late-Romantic idiom—as reflected in its shifting tempos, tonalities, and moods—is tempered with the clarity and refinement that Chausson admired in the music of old French masters like Rameau and Couperin. Debussy reserved special praise for the “gentle dreaminess” of the final tranquillo section, “where, casting aside any ideas of description or narrative, the music itself is the sentiment that commands
our feelings.”
An outstanding cellist as well as a prolific composer, Boccherini was a leading exemplar of the playfully elegant galant style that flourished in the salons and concert halls of mid–18th-century Europe. Quickly outgrowing his native Lucca, he played alongside his bassist father in the Viennese court theater orchestra before striking out to make his name as an itinerant virtuoso, appearing widely as soloist and playing briefly in a string quartet in Livorno. By the late 1760s, Boccherini had migrated to Madrid, which would remain his home base for the rest of his life. A well-paid position in the household of the music-loving Spanish infante Don Luis provided both security and inspiration. Later, he entered the service of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm II, an amateur cellist for whom he composed many of his more than 100 string quintets. Late in life, Boccherini was less fortunate in his patrons and, despite his music’s continuing popularity, died in straitened circumstances in 1805.
Although Boccherini composed a considerable quantity of orchestral and vocal music in fulfillment of his various professional obligations, by far the greatest part of his oeuvre—more than 300 works—consists of string quintets, quartets, trios, and chamber music for other combinations of instruments. Not surprisingly, many of the quintets and quartets feature demanding cello parts tailored to Boccherini’s virtuosity, often venturing into the instrument’s upper register. A case in point is the sparkling Allegro moderato of the A-Major Cello Sonata, which interweaves smooth legato lines with intricate, crisply articulated staccato passagework. The bravura style is still more pronounced in the slow movement, with its high-flying, richly ornamented melodies that culminate in an improvisatory concerto-like cadenza. Although suavity takes precedence over technical display in the triple-time finale, marked Affettuoso (“tender”), the music’s florid, frothy elegance continues unabated to the end.
Throughout his life, Brahms struggled to reconcile the essentially percussive nature of the piano with the sustained, singing voices of the violin, viola, and cello. The contrast in sound and character is central to many of his greatest chamber works, from the first version of the 1854 B-Major Piano Trio to the two sonatas for clarinet (or viola) and piano of 1895. Late in life, Brahms came to believe that the clarinet, with its unique ability both to blend and to stand out in mixed company, was “much more adapted to the piano than string instruments”—yet there is no hint in either of his two cello sonatas that he had any qualms about the instrument’s ability to hold its own in dialogue with the piano.
In 1886, Brahms spent the first of three consecutive summer holidays at a rented villa nestled in the Swiss Alps near Thun. There—his creative juices stimulated by vigorous hikes, convivial company, voracious reading, and a copious supply of cigars and strong coffee—he produced no fewer than four chamber music masterpieces: the Second and Third violin sonatas, the Third Piano Trio, and the Cello Sonata No. 2 in F Major. The last opens with a heraldic two-note motto in the cello, characterized by its jagged rhythm and interval of a rising fourth (C to F). It and the piano’s nervously roiling tremolos resonate throughout the Allegro vivace, generating much of its atmosphere and thematic material. After straying down various tonal byways, the music circles home to F major for the recapitulation section. Next comes the luminous Adagio affettuoso in F-sharp major, which Brahms originally wrote for his First Cello Sonata and fortunately retrieved from the cutting-room floor. The turbulent Allegro passionato in F minor, with a contrasting middle section in F major, is notable for its restlessly shifting harmonies and rhythms. The sonata culminates in an exuberant Allegro molto, which blends limpid lyricism with percussive brilliance and striking pizzicato effects in the cello part.
—Harry Haskell
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