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committee to relieve him of his position, but his resignation in 1853
ended the matter. By early the next year, Schumann’s reason had
completely given way. On February 27, he tried to drown himself
in the Rhine, and a week later he was committed to the asylum in
Endenich, where he lingered with fleeting moments of sanity for
nearly two-and-a-half years. His faithful Clara was there with him
when he died on July 29, 1856, at the age of 46.
Though Schumann’s tenure in Düsseldorf proved difficult and
ended sadly, he enjoyed there one of his greatest outbursts of
creativity—nearly one-third of his compositions were written in the
city. His two Sonatas for Violin and Piano (A minor and D minor)
were composed in a rush during the autumn of 1851 (September
12-16 and October 26-November 2). A restless theme, marked
“with passionate expression,” opens the A minor Sonata. The music
brightens as it enters its formal second theme area, though its
melodic content continues to be spun from the same motives. Rapid
harmonic changes lend an unsettled quality to the development
section. After a full recapitulation, the movement ends abruptly in
the anxious, minor-mode manner in which it began. The Allegretto,
more a pleasant intermezzo than an emotional slow movement, takes
as its principal theme a three-part melody: the outer phrases are
sweet and lyrical; the center one, quick-moving and staccato. Two
short episodes, one reminiscent of the lyrical strain, the other of the
staccato phrase, separate the returns of the main theme. The sonataform
finale resumes the restless mood of the opening movement,
though the level of tension here is heightened by the music’s fast
tempo and tightly packed imitative texture. Episodes in brighter
tonalities provide some expressive contrast, but the Sonata ends with
agitated cadential gestures that reaffirm the work’s pervasive anxious
mood.
Sonata No. 6 for Unaccompanied Violin in E Major, Op. 27, No. 6
(1924)
Eugène Ysaÿe
(Born July 16, 1858, in Liège, Belgium; died May 12, 1931, in
Brussels)
Though he was famed internationally as a supreme master of the
violin (in his book on The Art of Violin Playing), the noted scholar
and performer Carl Flesch called him “the most outstanding and
individual violinist I have ever heard in my life”), Ysaÿe also
composed a sizeable number of original works, most of them for his
own instrument. He was never formally trained in the discipline,
but he had a natural talent for composition that manifested itself in
a Romantic virtuoso style in his early works (notably eight violin
concertos which were never published and are virtually unknown)
and in the utilization of progressive techniques in his later
creations. His smaller pieces for violin and piano are regular recital
items, but his most admired compositions are the six Sonatas for
Unaccompanied Violin (Op. 27), which he was inspired to compose
after hearing Joseph Szigeti play a Bach solo sonata in 1924. These
Sonatas are in an advanced stylistic idiom influenced by the modern
music of France and call for feats of technical mastery that rival
those required by the Solo Caprices of Paganini.
The one-movement Sonata No. 6 was dedicated to the Spanish
violinist Manuel Quiroga, who toured Europe and America with
great success until a street accident in New York in 1937 ended
his performing career. Ysaÿe’s flamboyant work, almost constantly
in double-stops, evokes the rhapsodic Gypsy style of Quiroga’s
homeland.
Selections from Porgy and Bess (1935)
George Gershwin
(Born September 26, 1898, in Brooklyn, New York; died July 11,
1937, in Hollywood, California)
Arranged by Jascha Heifetz (1899-1987)
During a retreat in October and November 1944 at Harbor Island
in San Diego Bay to recover from two years of constant concertizing
and touring throughout America and the theaters of war to play for
the troops, Jascha Heifetz transcribed several of the most beloved
numbers from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess for violin and piano.
Gershwin was a friend and a frequent guest when Heifetz lived
in New York in the late 1920s (rumor had it that he may have
been interested in one of Heifetz’s daughters), and the violinist’s
arrangements respectfully retain the substance and the character
of the vocal originals. Heifetz did suit them to his luminous and
impeccable style, however, with frequent double-stops, quickly
shifting registers, and occasional virtuoso flourishes between phrases.
Fantaisie Brillante on Themes from Gounod’s Faust for Violin and
Piano, Op. 20 (1868)
Henryk Wieniawski
(Born July 10, 1835, in Lublin, Poland; died March 31, 1880, in
Moscow)
Henryk Wieniawski was one of the most accomplished musical
artists of the mid-19th century—Anton Rubinstein called him
“without a doubt the greatest violinist of his time.” He was known
for the richness of his tone, the perfection of his technique and
the fiery Slavic temperament that electrified his playing. The two
concertos are the most important of his four dozen compositions,
but several of his smaller pieces are familiar items in the violin
literature: The Fantaisie Brillante on Themes from Gounod’s “Faust”
of 1868 is not just a virtuoso showpiece, but also a testament to the
instant popularity that greeted Gounod’s opera following its premiere
in Paris just nine years before.
—Dr. Richard E. Rodda
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