In the slow opening section of the Sonata in E major, the harpsichord still has an accompanying role (although a very beautiful one, full of elegant modulations), but in the Allegro the players are already exchanging thematic material enthusiastically. The deservedly famous Adagio could almost be a classical passacaglia, if it were not for the fact that the violin soon takes on the ‘accompanying’ chords and leaves plenty of room for the harpsichord. This makes the musical entanglement complete, and the musical partners curve sensually around one another. The exuberant last movement gives a display based on two themes: at the beginning and end a flashy roller coaster of quick runs, and in the middle a more lyrical line of swaying triplets.

R. Strauss (1864-1949): Sonata in E flat for violin and piano The nobly aspiring outer movements remind us that E-flat was also to be the key of Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), as it was of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony. Consummately crafted, they have a refined sparkle that overcomes the dark intrusions with confident energy. Strauss had already come to regard sonata form as a “hollow shell,” but one that he filled here with characteristic thematic ebullience and sophistication. The first movement shifts meter freely for different themes, and even has the two instruments playing in different meters at one point. The Finale begins with a hushed, premonitory prelude for the piano, before launching the energetic main theme, which is closely related to the opening (and emphatic closing) of the first movement. It is emotionally and technically turbulent, but relatively stable harmonically and metrically until Strauss shifts into the triple-meter variant in C-flat presaged by the piano introduction. The Violin Sonata was composed the year that Strauss first met the soprano Pauline de Ahna, whom he would later marry, and it is not hard to hear suggestions of romantic ardor in the lush lyricism of the work. This is particularly true of the rapt, long-breathed Improvisation, the Andante cantabile middle movement, which proved so popular that Strauss allowed it to be published separately.

A.Glazunov (1865-1936): Violin concerto in A minor The work, composed in 1904, has about it a deep-hued Romanticism, its lyricism tinged with a hint of world-weariness, the melodies bittersweet. The first movement’s chromatic, pensive main theme, given buoyance by an accompaniment of Mendelssohnian repeated notes in clarinets and bassoons, and the sweet-sad secondary theme bear out this observation. The second movement, with the burnished broadness of the main theme, has a poignance that is heightened by the warm ministrations of harp and French horn. The Concerto, filled with virtually every technical trick in the book, is in three movements played without pause — with no final cadences at the ends of the first and second movements. In fact, one could say there are only two movements: in an unusual structural procedure, Glazunov in effect combines the first and second movements, the second taking the place of a development section and the main and subordinate themes of the first movement returning as recapitulation. The slow movement has a whirlwind middle section that separates its own main theme from the return of the first movement’s themes, after which there is a knotty cadenza that goes directly into the finale. Here, Glazoenov is ebullient (the main “hunt” theme, introduced by trumpets), charming (the light-as-air second theme), and rustic (the third, out-in-the-country theme, complete with peasant pedal points). He is also the maker of a wonderfully attractive ending to a colorful, bravura showpiece.