Violin Sonata No.3 in C minor Op.45 (1886-7)

Grieg started work on the last of his three Violin Sonatas in Troldhaugen in the autumn of 1886 and completed it the following January. It was first performed, by Adolf Brodsky and the composer himself, at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in December 1887. César Franck wrote his one and only Violin Sonata in the summer of 1886 and it was first performed by Eugène Ysaye in Brussels in December 1886. So, although it is not impossible, it is highly unlikely that Grieg’s Sonata in C minor was influenced in any way by Franck’s in A major. And yet the resemblance between the urgent first subject of Grieg’s first movement and that of Franck’s second movement - not to mention several other apparent echoes of that kind - is so striking that it is difficult to dismiss the notion entirely.

What many composers found most interesting about the Franck Sonata was its cyclic form, the overall structural unity achieved through one influential melodic idea. If there is anything of that in the Grieg Sonata it is far less deliberately carried out. The influential theme in this case, if there is one, is not the turbulent first subject of the Allegro molto ed appassionato, in spite of the flexibility demonstrated by its transformation into a broader shape soon after its first appearance. It could, on the other hand, be the second subject, not as it is so lyrically introduced by the violin in E flat major but as it is converted into a short phrase passing backwards and forwards between the two instruments. That phrase plays no part in the development, however. The most inspired event here is an even broader transformation of the first theme high on the E string of the violin over flowing arpeggios on the piano - an inspiration obviously too good not to repeat at the end of the recapitulation.

The second movement is remote from the rest of the work both in its E major tonality and in its material. It is a kind of intermezzo in its own world of romantic song, the melodic beauty of the outer sections most effectively offset by the vigorous Norwegian dance in E minor in the middle. The one connection with the other movements is harmonic: the reprise of the opening section begins in an ingeniously contrived E flat major before shifting up to its rightful E major.

The Allegro animato begins with a primitive folk dance in C minor resourcefully presented in a variety of violin and piano colours. Then, in a slower tempo and in A flat major, the violin quietly introduces on the G-string a theme which, though an attractively lyrical melody in its own right, could be related to the fragmentary phrase derived from the second subject of the first movement. However that may be, it is so persuasively presented over flowing piano arpeggios in C major at the emotional and structural climax of the movement that its benign influence prevails over the aggressive instincts of the folk dance and carries through a prestissimo coda to end the work in a jubilant C major.

Gerald Larner ©2005