May 30, 2005 at 11:25 PM

Brahms notes are done! See below.

Today is a wonderful day. Andrea Swan is an amazing, sensitive musician, and I am quite excited to be playing with her tomorrow night. We had a lesson and a rehearsal this morning that went very well. I love how she gives all the notes in the Brahms just the right amount of space, so that they have room to breathe and luxuriate, but are still beautifully flowing. Since I played all morning on a bottle of Mountain Dew, I went out afterwards to Panera and had a delicious Strawberry Poppyseed and Chicken Salad (to which I am so addicted that I'm even giving it the respect of capitalizing its title) whilst listening to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony (the title of which I would be a fool not to capitalize). Everything today and even my recital program has reflected my mood and my excitement at the prospect of soon sharing my biggest joy and passion with those I love.

About to do some more practicing, this time in my dress to make sure it's comfortable, since I've been sitting in front of my computer for far too long perfecting my program instead of my playing! Tomorrow I'll make copies and try to enlist someone to do lots of mindless stapling. A very close friend of mine, a cellist, also has her recital tomorrow afternoon, so I would like to go buy some pretty flowers as well. Things are certainly a little more convenient here with a car! I also probably still have time to have dinner with a friend tonight, so I'd better get going. Will post the Beethoven notes later tonight.

Brahms Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in G Major, Op. 78

“I could not help bursting into tears of joy over it. Many others could perhaps understand it and speak about it better but no one could feel it more than I do. I wish the last movement could accompany me to the next world.” ~Clara Schumann

“Come, rise to higher spheres.” Brahms inscribed his first of three violin sonatas with this quote from Goethe’s Queen of Heaven. The G Major sonata’s bittersweet lyricism, which sets it apart from the rest, indeed instills the work with an atmosphere of surprising sublimity.

Composed in 1878 and 1879, shortly after the death of Brahms’s godson Felix Schumann, the piece was actually the composer’s fifth attempt at a violin sonata. Brahms’s relentless perfectionism paid off, as the piece beautifully reflects the idyllic surroundings of his summer resort in Pörtschach, Austria. The violin’s role consists very much of melodic singing from beginning to end, yet the interplay between the two instruments is enriched by constant metric cross-currents and hemiola. As an example of this rhythmic complexity, the first movement’s time signature of 3/2 can be subdivided into either 6/4 or 12/8. “That all three can be suggested simultaneously without any sense of artifice speaks to the thoroughness with which this technique has been assimilated into an expressive language” (Botstein, The Compleat Brahms).

The first movement (Vivace ma non troppo) opens with a motive of three repeated D’s in a dotted rhythm, immediately introducing an expansive melody. This gives way to an even lovelier second theme, with an impassioned peak that is the hallmark of Brahms’s style. The development, initiated by the first theme in the piano and pizzicato chords in the violin, explores stormier realms, though a brief coda brings the movement to a joyous end.

The piano alone begins the second movement (Adagio) with a warm, dignified theme in the key of E-flat; in contrast, the violin’s entrance is more tentative. The middle section revives the dotted-rhythmic motive in the somber manner of a funeral march. When the opening theme returns with rich double-stops in the violin, it is as if the sun shines again.

Brahms omits the traditional Scherzo in favor of a Rondo for the final movement, based on two of his earlier songs, Regenlied and Nachklang, Op. 59, Nos. 3 and 4 (the texts of the original poems by Klaus Groth follow, with translations by Emily Ezust). The minor mode conveys the nostalgia for childhood in Groth’s words, while the piano’s sixteenth notes establish a ubiquitous “raindrop” motive, accompanying a theme in the violin that begins with the same dotted-rhythmic motive of three D’s that began the first movement. Later, Brahms brings back the noble theme of the Adagio, and the beautiful coda serves to return us fully to the major mode—a significant shift from the song, which ends with a Picardy third still in the context of minor. Violin and piano trade the familiar motto back and forth, “as if they were calling their farewells to each other across an increasing distance” (Botstein). Brahms’s friend, renowned musicologist Eduard Hanslick, perhaps put it best: “For me the Regenlied Sonata is like a dear and true friend whom I would never forsake for anyone else. In its soft, contemplatively dreaming feeling and its wondrously consoling strength, it is one of a kind.”

May 30, 2005 at 11:25 PM

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