Violin Sonata No.1 in D minor, Op.75

If the Fauré Violin Sonata in A major made musical history, as the first major work of its kind in the French repertoire, the Saint-Saëns Violin Sonata in D minor made literary history as the source of the “petite phrase” that assumes such erotic significance in Proust’s Un amour de Swann. Several candidates have been proposed as the real-life equivalent of the fictional Vinteuil Violin Sonata - Franck’s and Fauré’s prominent among them - but Proust himself is on record as attributing it, grudgingly, to Saint-Saëns: ‘In as much as reality was of use to me - not much at all, to tell you the truth - the “little phrase” of that sonata (and this I have never told anyone) is … a charming but actually mediocre phrase from a Violin Sonata by Saint-Saëns, a musician whom I dislike.’

Written in 1885 - nine years after the Fauré and a year before the Franck, neither of which was to overshadow it for some time to come - the Saint-Saëns Violin Sonata in D minor was just the sort of piece that would have been performed at one of Madame Verdurin’s soirées as described in À la recherche du temps perdu. To judge by Swann’s reactions, her guests would have been impressed by the dramatic opening of the first movement but, on the eventual entry of a more intimate theme high on the E-string of the violin over quietly rising arpeggios on the piano, they would have been carried away: “At a certain moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had tried to grasp the phrase or harmony - he did not know which - that had just been played and that had opened and expanded his soul, as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist air of evening, has the power of dilating one's nostrils…”

In less poetic terms, the F-major second subject had emerged from the D minor tumult of the first subject and was now about to impose a lasting influence on the work. It dominates the development section, first of all in diminution in an episode of fugal counterpoint and then in its original shape but with a more passionate expression on the E-string of the violin again. Although it is excluded from the recapitulation, it is awarded the important function of performing the transition into the Adagio second movement.

The idea of dividing the long-term construction into two main sections, linking the first movement directly with the second and the third directly with the fourth, Saint-Saëns was shortly to apply on a still larger scale to his Third Symphony in C minor (the so-called “Organ” Symphony). He was also to take the expressive melody introduced by the piano in the opening bars of the present Adagio and transform it into the main theme of the Poco adagio of the later work. Here it not only supplies the main thematic interest of the outer sections but also reappears at the very heart of the movement, stretched out on the violin as a thoughtful counterpoint to the more agitated material of the middle section.

The last two movements are a resourcefully scored scherzo and trio - the scherzo figuration carried into the trio by the piano as the violin weaves a new melody round it - linked to a moto perpetuo finale. Actually, although the breathless semiquaver motion persists through most of the Allegro molto, it is not strictly perpetual. It has to give way twice to accommodate a broader melody of heroic demeanour on the violin and not only that but also, on the second occasion, a lyrical memory of the rose-scented “little phrase” of the first movement. As the coda confirms, by superimposing that theme on the violin over the semiquavers on the piano, it is not so little (and not so mediocre) either.