Four Pieces for violin and piano Op.7 (1910)

Sehr langsam (very slow)

Rasch (quick)

Sehr langsam (very slow)

Bewegt (animated)

“To express a novel in a single gesture, joy in a single breath.” Arnold Schoenberg’s definition of the miniaturist’s art was actually inspired by Webern’s Six Bagatelles for string quartet Op.9, most of which are even shorter than the shortest of the Four Pieces for violin and piano Op.7. It applies equally well, however, to the present work, not least the first movement. Marked ppp or pp throughout, the opening Sehr langsam is only nine bars long and yet opens with a muted violin harmonic held through more than two bars and includes a two-note ostinato sustained to a similar length near the end, leaving room for little else but a few chords and three or four rising and falling phrases in the piano part and a short but expressive melody on the violin in realtively high profile towards the middle.

If the first movement (at just a minute) equals a novel, the 24 bars of the Rasch second movement (at about a minute and a half) is a whole epic. It is certainly adventurous, proceeding at a basically urgent pace but intermittently slowing down, covering a wide dynamic range from ppp to fff and calling for a virtuoso varity of articulaton from the violinist and dramatic extremes of expression from both instruments. The Sehr langsam third movement (just over a minute) is like a ghostly reflection of the first, falling from ppp at the beginning on another held note on muted violin through a comparatively sustained melodic line on the piano to “scarcely audible” level towards the end. The shortest movement of all (at less than a minute), the closing Bewegt is a distant echo of the second, beginning with a bold ff on violin but, after a peremptory pizzicato, dying out on a descending arpeggio repeated “like a breath” on the finger-board of the violin.