Violin Sonata No.1 in F major Op.8 (1865)

Looking back over his three violin sonatas, which he believed to be among the best of all his works, Grieg noted that each represented an important stage in his development – “the first naïve, rich in ideas, the second national and the third with a wider horizon.” Although subsequent critical opinion has been comparatively unkind to the earliest of them, Grieg was surely right in retaining his affection for the work. It was the Sonata in F major that, presumably because of its abundance of good ideas, first aroused Liszt’s interest in the young composer and, whatever he meant by “naïve,” it is certainly inspired by youthful freshness.

A curious but not unrepresentative criticism directed at the first movement is that it is “distinctly academic.” It is true that Grieg was not long out of the Leipzig Conservatoire, where he had no doubt been thoroughly drilled in sonata form. But what academic would have expected him to open a sonata Allegro with two chords, E minor and A minor, which have nothing to do with the F major tonality of the piece? And there is nothing academic either about the Andante episodes at the beginning of the development and, more briefly, at the end of the movement. Apart from those features, the opening Allegro con brio is fairly straightforward, with two main themes in a lively 6/8, both of them introduced by the violin, an eventful development section, and a regulation recapitulation. But those unconventional features – the opening piano chords and the F minor Andante versions of the main theme – are part of the fabric of the construction and cannot be separated from it.

Although Grieg designated his Violin Sonata in G minor Op.13 as representative of his “nationalist” period, there is a clear Norwegian element in this work too. The A minor outer sections of the second movement are based on a sort of minuet melody incorporating the so-called “Grieg formula,” a descending three-note motif derived from Norwegian folk song. The quicker middle section is a brilliant A major variant in springar style authentically coloured by Hardanger fiddle drones on the open E and A strings. In comparison with that, the last movement might seem a little academic, not least at the beginning of the development section where Grieg starts on a fugue but drops it after a mere dozen bars. But, introduced by piano chords distantly reflecting those at the beginning of the work, it is motivated by an irresistibly tuneful vitality which spills over into the impulsive accelerations towards the final bars.