Sonata for solo viola, Op.25, No.1

Breit (Broad) –

Sehr frisch und straff (Fresh and taut)

Sehr langsam (Very slow)

Rasendes Zeitmass. Wild (Mad tempo. Wild)

Langsam, aber mit viel Ausdruck (Slow but with much expression)

As a highly accomplished violist and a composer of apparently inexhaustible creative energy, Hindemith must have seen the poverty of the viola repertoire – in comparison with the wealth of music available to the violin and the cello – as a challenge he was destined to meet. Certainly, between 1919 and 1939 he wrote as many as four works for viola and orchestra, three sonatas for viola and piano and four for unaccompanied viola. Much the most successful of the solo sonatas, the composer’s own favourite, is Op.25 No.1, which he wrote for the Czech violist Ladislav Cerny in 1922. Apparently, it was Cerny’s idea to apply the crazy tempo direction to the fourth movement together with the metronome mark crotchet equals 600–640, which is clearly impossible but which brought the work by no means unwelcome notoriety.

Apart from that brief exercise in the absurd, it is a serious work. Based on the sturdy double-stoppd motif with which it begins, the declamatory first movement leads without a break into the dramatically tense Sehr frisch und straff. The two melodious slow movements – the contemplative Sehr langsam and the melancholy Langsam aber mith viel Ausdruck which closes the work – are separated by a wild outburst of energy where, unnecessarily perhaps, the composer advises the hard-pressed violist that “tonal beauty is not a priority.”