Violin Sonata (1914-1921)

Con moto

Balada: con moto

Allegretto - meno mosso - allegretto

Adagio - poco mosso - maestoso - adagio

Janacek wrote little more music for violin and piano than Messiaen. He completed a Violin Sonata in 1928 but even then, after three revisions, he did not consider it an exceptional work. He did, however, detect “some truth in the second and third movements.” More enigmatic than untruthful, the first movement begins with a violin improvisation which is then reshaped into the extended lyricism of the main theme and the dramatic collage of trills, ostinatos and melodic fragments associated with the second subject.

The construction of the Balada, which was originally written as a separate piece, is unusual for Janacek. Although the first and second sections are related, the third, with an extended melody in octaves on violin and piano, seems to have nothing more than its accompanying ostinato in common with them until, at the emotional and the structural climax of the movement, he merges the first and third sections into each other. The Allegretto, with outer sections based on a Moravian dance tune not unlike the troika theme in Katya Kabanova, is more characteristic.

According to the composer, the first version of the Violin Sonata was written “at the beginning of the war, when we were expecting the Russians in Moravia.” Perhaps this hope of liberation explains the violin’s strange trumpet calls, marked both feroce and espressivo, punctuating the piano’s first quiet announcement of the chorale theme at the start of the last movement. There is certainly a direct reflection of it at the maestoso climax representing, as Janacek explained, the Russian army entering Hungary - which was not entirely good news, as the Hungarians soon found out. Janacek’s concluding comment is as enigmatic as his opening remarks.

Con moto

Balada: con moto

Allegretto - meno mosso - allegretto

Adagio - poco mosso - maestoso - adagio

Janácek had long wanted to write a violin sonata. He had made two efforts as a student, both in 1880, but he seems to have discarded them as unsatisfactory. Certainly, both of them are lost. What inspired him to start on the work we now know as the Violin Sonata was the beginning of the First World War and the fervent hope that the Russian army, which was about to enter Hungary at the time, would at last liberate Czechoslovakia from Austrian domination. He was encouraged too by a Balada for violin and piano he had written some time earlier and which seemed worthy of a place in a larger work.

However, although he succeeded in incorporating the Balada in a four-movement sonata in 1914 it wasn’t until seven years later, after several revisions, that the work found its final form. Even then he did not seem particularly pleased with it: “I don’t consider it to be an exceptional work,” he said, “but there is some truth in the second and third movements.” More enigmatic than untruthful, the first movement begins with a violin improvisation, accompanied by cimbalom-like tremolandos on the piano, which is then reshaped into the extended lyricism of the main theme and the dramatic collage of trills, ostinatos and melodic fragments associated with the second subject.

The construction of the Balada is unusual for Janácek. Although the first and second sections are related, the third, with an extended melody in octaves on violin and piano, seems to have nothing more than its accompanying ostinato in common with them until – at the point where the emotional and structural issues are simultaneously resolved – he merges the first and third sections into each other. The Allegretto third movement, a kind of scherzo with outer sections based on a Moravian dance tune not unlike the troika theme in Katya Kabanova, is more characteristic.

It could be that the violin’s vehement trumpet calls, punctuating the piano’s first quiet announcement of a chorale theme at the start of the last movement, were inspired by the hope of liberation by way of Russian military intervention. There is certainly a direct reflection of Janácek’s thinking in this respect at the maestoso climax representing, as he explained, the Russian army entering Hungary – which was not entirely good news for the Hungarians, as they soon found out. Janácek’s concluding comment is as enigmatic as his opening remarks.

Con moto

Balada: con moto

Allegretto - meno mosso - allegretto

Adagio - poco mosso - maestoso - adagio

Janacek said of his Violin Sonata that he did not “consider it to be an exceptional work but that there is some truth in the second and third movements.” In fact it is consistently truthful and characteristically passionate even it if does not have the close structural organisation of, say, the two String Quartets. But they are among the products of the remarkable last five of Janacek’s seventy-four years, whereas the Violin Sonata was begun when he was a mere sixty.

The incorporation of an earlier Balada for violin and piano and the three revisions between 1914 and 1921 cannot have contributed to the unity of the composition. On the other hand, Janacek’s short but expressive, arching melodies – several of them anticipating signficant motifs in Katya Kabanova – have an inbred family likeness and scarcely need to be formally unified. The enigmatic utterance of the unaccompanied violin at the beginning of the first movement is effortlessly reshaped into the extended lyricism of the opening section. Before the piano takes up that melody, to elaborate it in a quicker tempo, there is one solitary bar of Adagio. The violin’s three notes in that bar and a figure derived from the piano ostinato provide the material for the whole of the dramatic collage of trills, ostinatos and thematic fragments in the middle section. Both sections are recapitulated – the first in slightly altered form, the second abbreviated.

The second movement is the Balada which was written as a separate piece but which, since the violin melody has a contour familiar from the first movement, is not unconvincingly introduced here. The construction is unusual for Janacek. The first and second sections, the latter beginning with arpeggiated chords on the piano, are related. But the third, with the melody in octaves on violin and piano, seems to have nothing more than its accompanying ostinato in common with the first until – in a remarkable passage that is both the emotional and the structural climax of the movement – Janacek merges the first and third sections into each other.

The style and content of the Allegretto are more characteristic. The outer sections are based on a Moravian dance tune, not unlike the troika theme in Katya Kabanova. The violins’s passionate, chromatic interruptions to it are to reappear transformed as the thematic material of the slow middle section.

According to the composer, the Violin Sonata was written “at the beginning of the war, when we were expecting the Russians in Moravia” (and, in consequence, liberation from Austrian domination). A direct reflection of this occurs at the maestoso climax of the last movement. Janacek has said that he insisted at the first performance “on the most agitated rendering of the high piano tremolos over the chorale-like part of the last movement, explaining that it was the Russian army entering Hungary.” Perhaps this also explains the violin’s strange trumpet calls, marked both feroce and espressivo, punctuating the piano’s first quiet announcement of the chorale theme at the start of the movement. The violin abandons its military role for a short idyllic interlude but then encourages the piano towards the triumphant “chorale-like” climax. At its height the violin surprisingly and movingly recalls the idyll, which has a calming influence, and the Russian army quietly goes away again.