Sonata No.1 for violin and piano (Sz 75)

Immediately after the first performance of the Violin Sonata No.1 - by its dedicatee Jelly Aranyi, with the composer himself at the piano, in London in March 1922 - Bartok was “surprised and almost confused,” he wrote, “by the waves of applause rising up to the platform from an English audience which is generally described as cold and reserved.” And, he might have added, for a work which is uncommonly difficult for all concerned. Even more than the Violin Sonata No.2 (the companion work written for the same violinist a year later) it represents Bartok at the radical extreme in matters of harmony, rhythm, and texture.

      More than seventy years later these things should not worry us too much, least of all when it is performed with something approaching the passion which went into the writing of the work. But one aspect of the scoring can still be disconcerting: convinced of the basic incompatibility of the violin and the piano, Bartok chose not so much to attempt to reconcile them as to accept their differences by supplying two distinct parts in which one instrument rarely accompanies the other or blends with the other or shares the same material as the other. The violin and piano proceed in parallel and arrive at the same point but there are times when they could almost be involved in different works.

      That said, it is also worth pointing out that after the tough-sounding beginning, where the violin introduces the broad main theme of the first movement over the introductory cimbalom-like figuration on the piano, the textures do become gradually (if intermittently) more conciliatory. There is one particularly beautiful    passage at the centre of the construction, where the violin adds quiet tremolandos and arpeggios to gently dissonant harmonies on the piano; the recall of the main theme just after that and, above all, its final appearance high on the E-string are moments of inspired lyricism.

The central slow movement is more lyrical still, even if the theme on which the movement is based - introduced by unaccompanied violin in the opening bars - seems somewhat austere at first. On its return after the more dramatic middle section, that theme is elaborately decorated in an expressive    and surprisingly voluptuous violin part and, what is more, with the participation of the piano this time.

        As for the Allegro finale, though the sound is certainly tough again, the folk-dance impulse is irresistible. From the beginning, where the violin associates itself with the country fiddle by restricting itself to the G-string for as long as it takes to introduce the main rondo theme, the underlying pace of the movement gradually rises. The tempo falls back from time to time but only to make the next acceleration more effective, it seems, as the two instruments - now joined in an obviously common purpose - make for the increasingly hectic final bars.