About a week and a half ago I jumped into my car to run an errand, the radio popped on, and the announcer revealed that I had just missed a violin sonata by Mozart.
A violin sonata? I’m aware of Mozart’s piano sonatas – the second movement from one of them even made it onto my list of Top 100 Classical Music Favorites (HERE) – but violin sonatas? I hadn’t heard of these pieces – OR – if I have heard them on the radio, I s’pose that I just wasn’t paying attention. Long story short: I decided to listen to one of Mozart’s violin sonatas as my featured piece for the week (turns out he wrote 36 of them – info HERE), and I picked number 25 in F major at random. And no surprise – I got what I expected: a delightful piece of violin music – accompanied by the piano – written in three movements:
However, in relation to that “accompanied by the piano” comment, check this out from a blog piece by the LA Philharmonic: “In addition to everything else – composer of astonishing invention and fluency, virtuoso pianist, all-round boy wonder – Mozart was an accomplished violinist and violist. He could hardly have avoided it, as his father Leopold was a master violinist and the author of the leading violin manual of the day. So it is hardly surprising that Mozart composed a number of sonatas for violin and piano – or rather, for piano with violin. In the duo sonatas that Mozart composed throughout his career, there is a constant development of equality in the partnership, which initially placed the burden entirely on the keyboard and left the string part almost optional.” Of course – LOL – I was, in fact, surprised that there were so many of these pieces – new classical music territory for me – but the unnamed bloggist hit the piano/violin relationship nail on the head. Here’s how the sonata is described in the article (HERE): “The first movement is driven by the energy of fleet triplets flowing between the instruments as they trade melody and accompaniment. The second movement is an extraordinary set of variations in D minor. The Minuet finale, complete with a contrasting Trio section in B-flat, reduces the violin to its most subservient role.” Still, the piece is enjoyable – though it includes nothing as catchy or as memorable as Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” his Ronda Alla Turca, his overture to The Marriage of Figaro, the “Elvira Madigan” theme found in his Piano Concerto No. 21, and so on. Still, the piece is pleasant, breezy, and likable enough that I plan to investigate more of these works by Mozart. Coincidentally – in a Baader-Meinhof moment the other night – I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I put in my earbuds and listened to a bit of classical music to see if that might help. I clicked on my I-Heart-Radio app and listened to KUSC out of Los Angeles, and I caught the tail-end of a pleasant, breezy and likeable enough piece. The announcer then came on and told me that it was Mozart’s violin sonata number 36. A sure sign that I need to listen to more of these works!
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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