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Track(s) taken from SIGCD376

Five Pieces for violin and piano, Op 81

composer
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
1915-1918

Tamsin Waley-Cohen (violin), Huw Watkins (piano)
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Recording details: November 2013
St George's Church, Brandon Hill, Bristol, United Kingdom
Produced by Nicholas Parker
Engineered by Andrew Mellor & Claire Hay
Release date: April 2014
Total duration: 16 minutes 49 seconds
 

Reviews

'Tamsin Waley-Cohen's love for Debussy's Violin Sonata of 1917 led her to assemble four works for violin and piano written at that date or near it. The Respighi was an obvious choice; then she discovered that Sibelius had written his Op 81 collection at that time too, while 1917 was the date when Elgar wrote his Sonata, one of his three late chamber works … Waley-Cohen plays with an obvious love of the music, most sympathetically accompanied by Watkins. Fine sound, with an excellent sense of presence and clean separation' (Gramophone)

'It's their year of composition, 1917, that links the four works for violin and piano in Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Huw Watkins' collection, all by composers who had either not been affected by the rise of modernism in the previous decade, or in Debussy's case, who had played a crucial part in it but had taken his own music in a different direction. Each disc has a sharply contrasted pair of works. Sibelius's Five Pieces is the least substantial here, charming and expertly written for what was his own instrument but is really just a sequence of salon miniatures which are followed by Respighi's expansive sonata, full of rhapsodic violin lines and grandly rhetorical piano writing. Waley-Cohen and Watkins relish all that, but they seem more at home in the Debussy and Elgar works. The former is given a wonderfully subtle, introspective and touching performance; the latter is by turns typically bluff and elegiac, leaving just enough room for doubt in the optimism of its finale' (The Guardian)
Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) loved the violin. His ambition had originally been to become a violinist, but his compositional skill soon exceeded his instrumental abilities. His hugely successful Violin Concerto has tended to draw attention from his other string works, of which there is a surprisingly substantial amount.

For financial expediency, Sibelius composed many short pieces for the instrument during the First World War (orchestras struggled, as musicians were called to the front). However, these inventive miniatures are sadly neglected nowadays.

The Five Pieces for violin and piano, Op 81 were composed between 1915 and 1918 and while published as a set, each can stand on its own. The music does not reflect the tragedy of war at any point and like similar occasional pieces written by Kreisler, each has an abundance of charm and melodic invention.

The Mazurka (written first, in 1915) is the most demanding technically, opening in a cadenza-like manner and replete with huge leaps in the melody, with much double stopping and other virtuoso effects. The Rondino dates from 1917 and is written in a quasi-Rococo style. The Valse (also 1917) is languorous and beguiling with a most inventive middle section. It has a similar flavour to Elgar’s Chanson du Matin.

Aubade (composed 1918—the title means ‘morning song’) has a Mozartian delicacy about it, with a lovely singing melody supported by the busy piano figuration. Finally, the Menuetto (also 1918) is by no means a pastiche of an 18th-century dance but a genuine attempt to evoke the classical period, its vigorous use of the trill providing a vibrant, masculine flavour.

from notes by Brendan Carroll © 2014

Other albums featuring this work

Smörgasbord
Mats Lidström (cello), Bengt Forsberg (piano)
CDA67184Download only

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