Download Beethoven Violin Sonata 4 Program Notes



Sonata

Beethoven wrote this Sonata, his ninth for piano and violin, in the spring of 1803. It was first performed on May 24 of that year, though Beethoven barely got it done in time: he called his copyist at 4:30 that morning to begin copying a part for him, and at the concert he and the violinist had to perform some of the music from Beethoven's manuscript. The violinist on that occasion was George Polgreen Bridgetower (1778-1860), a mulatto virtuoso who had performed throughout Europe. Beethoven was so taken with Bridgetower's playing that he intended to dedicate the Sonata to him, and we might know this music today as the 'Bridgetower' Sonata but for the fact that the composer and the violinist quarreled and Beethoven dedicated it instead to the French violinist Rudolph Kreutzer, whom he had met in Vienna a few years earlier. But Kreutzer found this music beyond his understanding and - ironically - never performed the Sonata that bears his name.

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Program

Beethoven originally intended this to be published as a contrasting companion piece to his 'Spring' Sonata, and indeed the two works appeared together as Op. In a new edition the following year, though, the violin parts of the two sonatas were mistakenly printed in different formats, and to save face and spare the costs of re-engraving, the sonatas were published 'as is' under. Program notes for Beethoven Violin Sonata No. Addeddate 2017-04-10 17:43:20 Identifier BeethovenSonata1. DOWNLOAD OPTIONS download 1 file. Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. The crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time. Work is the so-called Devil’s Trill Sonata, said to have been inspired by a dream in which the Devil seized Tartini’s violin and began to play a tormented piece characterized by wild trilling. The Pastorale heard on this week’s program, which is an arrangement Respighi made in 1908 of Tartini’s Violin Sonata.

As soon as he completed this Sonata, Beethoven set to work on the 'Eroica' Symphony, which would occupy him for the next six months. While the 'Kreutzer' Sonata does not engage the heroic issues of the first movement of that symphony, it has something of the Eroica's slashing power and vast scope. Beethoven was well aware of this and warned performers that the Sonata was 'written in a very concertante style, quasi-concerto-like.' From the first instant, one senses that this is music conceived on a grand scale. The Sonata opens with a slow introduction (the only one in Beethoven's ten violin sonatas), a cadenza-like entrance for the violin alone. The piano makes a similarly dramatic entrance, and gradually the two instruments outline the interval of a rising half-step that will figure prominently in the first movement. At the Presto, the music explodes forward, and while Beethoven provides calmer episodes along the way, including a chorale-like second subject marked dolce, the burning energy of this Presto opening is never far off: the music whips along on an almost machine-gun-like patter of eighth-notes, and these eventually drive the movement to its abrupt cadence.

Relief comes in the Andante con variazioni. The piano introduces the central theme, amiable but itself already fairly complex, and there follow four lengthy variations. The final movement - Presto - returns to the mood of the first. A simple A-major chord is the only introduction, and off the music goes. Beethoven had written this movement, a tarantella, in 1802, intending that it should be the finale of his Violin Sonata in A major, Op. 30, No. 1. But he pulled it out and wrote a new finale for the earlier sonata, and that was a wise decision: this fiery finale would have overpowered that gentle sonata. Here, though, it becomes the perfect conclusion to one of the most powerful pieces of chamber music ever written.

- A frequent speaker on the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Upbeat Live series, Eric Bromberger writes program notes for the Minnesota Orchestra, Washington Performing Arts Society, San Francisco Performances, and a number of other musical organizations.

03/07

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August 2019 was a full and rewarding month: after the Verbier Festival where he appeared in recital with Evgent Kissin and conducted the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra in a program in which he played Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with Antoine Tamestit, he joined YoYo Ma and Emanuel Ax at the Tanglewood Music Festival for a program of Beethoven Piano trios, in a duo recital with Ax of Beethoven Sonatas, and in an orchestral concert with the Boston Symphony in which he played and conducted Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Dvořák Symphony No. 7.

Beethoven Violin Sonata 10

Kavakos was also invited as Artiste Etoile at the Lucerne Festival where he appeared with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Mariinsky Orchestra with Valery Gergiev, Vienna Philharmonic with Andes Orozco Estrada, and in recital with Yuja Wang.

Download beethoven violin sonata 4 program notes

Download Beethoven Violin Sonata 4 Program Notes

In the 2019/20 season, in addition to concerts with major orchestras in Europe and the United States, Kavakos will once again join YoYo Ma and Emanuel Ax for three programs in Carnegie Hall comprising Beethoven trios and sonatas. He will undertake two Asian tours, first as soloist with the Singapore Symphony and Seoul Philharmonic and in recital in the NCPA Beijing, and then in the spring he performs with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra, prior to playing Beethoven Sonata Cycles in Shanghai and Guangzhou with Enrico Pace.

In recent years, Kavakos has succeeded in building a strong profile as a conductor and has conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Gürzenich Orchester, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Filarmonica Teatro La Fenice, and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. In the forthcoming season he will return to two orchestras where he has developed close ties as both violinist and conductor: L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. This season he also play/conducts the Czech Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI.

Born and brought up in a musical family in Athens, Kavakos curates an annual violin and chamber-music masterclass in Athens, which attracts violinists and ensembles from all over the world and reflects his deep commitment to the handing on of musical knowledge and traditions. Part of this tradition is the art of violin and bow-making, which Kavakos regards as a great mystery and to this day, an undisclosed secret. He plays the 'Willemotte' Stradivarius violin of 1734 and owns modern violins made by F. Leonhard, S.P. Greiner, E. Haahti and D. Bagué.