Violin sonata

A violin sonata is a musical composition for violin accompanied by a keyboard instrument and in earlier periods with a bass instrument doubling the keyboard bass line. The violin sonata developed from a simple baroque form with no fixed format to a standardised and complex classical form. Since the romantic age some composers have pushed the boundaries of both the classical format as well as the use of the instruments.

The early violin sonata

In the earliest violin sonatas a bass instrument and the harpsichord played a simple bass line (continuo) with the harpsichord doubling the bass line and fixed chords while the violin played independently. The music was contrapuntal with no fixed format. Telemann wrote many such sonatas as did Bach. Bach later wrote sonatas with the harpsichord obbligato, which freed the keyboard instrument from playing only a bass line accompaniment.

Haydn wrote over one hundred trio sonatas (which are essentially obbligato violin sonatas) with the use of the piano instead of the harpsichord and a baryton (a deeper cello like instrument) which mostly copied the piano's bass line. These works were mostly simple two movement sonatas of which the later ones used the sonata form.

Violin Sonata (Janáček)

Violin Sonata, a composition for violin and piano, is a work of the Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854-1928). It was written in the summer of 1914, but it was not Janáček’s first attempt to create such a composition. He resolved to compose a violin sonata already as a student at the conservatoire in Leipzig in 1880, and later during his studies in Vienna. His early sonatas are today lost.

Background

It took almost thirty-five years before Janáček returned to the composition of music for the same combination of instruments. The sonata was created in the period of composer’s marked interest in chamber music (Piano Trio (now lost), 1908, Pohádka (Fairy Tale) for cello and piano, 1910), and also at the beginning of World War I. The composer himself remembers: "...in the 1914 Sonata for violin and piano I could just about hear sound of the steel clashing in my troubled head...". The Sonata was printed after many corrections in mid-1922 by Hudební matice in Prague. Its first performance was given by violinist František Kudláček with Jaroslav Kvapil at the piano on 24 April 1922 at the concert of new Moravian music organized by the Young Composer’s Club in Brno. The first performance abroad took place in Frankfurt in 1923. The violin part was performed by the German composer Paul Hindemith.

Violin Sonata (Shostakovich)

Dmitri Shostakovich composed Sonata for Violin and Piano in G major, Op. 134 in the autumn of 1968 in Moscow, completing it on October 23. It is set in three movements and lasts approximately 31 minutes. It is dedicated to the violinist David Oistrakh, who premiered the work on May 3, 1969 in the Large Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.

Oistrakh's contribution

According to the dedicatee, the sonata was "greeted enthusiastically everywhere", and indeed, the third movement was the Russian piece on the set list for violinists at the 1970 Tchaikovsky Competition. The autograph resides in the Glinka Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow.

Oistrakh collaborated with Shostakovich on several of the composer's major works, purportedly contributing his own insight and suggestions based on the violin's strengths and technical limitations. The work's inscription reads: "For the 60th birthday of David Oistrakh", who offered an explanation for its composition:

Unofficial premiere with Moishe Vainberg as pianist happened on 8th January 1969 in the Russian Union of Composers, the official premieres with Richter as pianist happened at Great Hall Moscow Conservatory on 3rd May and at the Small Hall of Leningrad Philharmonic on 23rd September.