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Track(s) taken from SIGCD376

Violin Sonata in G minor, L148

composer
1916-1917

Tamsin Waley-Cohen (violin), Huw Watkins (piano)
Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
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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: 14 minutes 31 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)
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) was already suffering with the cancer which prematurely ended his life, when he began to compose his Violin Sonata in G minor, L140. He began to sketch the work in 1916 and completed it the following year. It was to be his final composition and was in fact part of a projected cycle of six sonatas for various instruments, of which only three were written (the others being for Cello and the ravishing Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp).

Its three short movements provide an astonishing range of moods and emotions within a relatively short time span and, according to a typically self-deprecating remark by the composer, it represents ‘an example of what may be produced by a sick man in time of war’. Debussy was profoundly affected by the war. In particular, he wished to assert a strong sense of nationalism in his music, that bordered on a definite anti-German feeling and even signed the score ‘Claude Debussy—musicien français’.

There is a profound air of melancholic nostalgia that imbues this music, and the whole work is intricately and subtly linked within its thematic scheme. There is also a definite Hungarian flavour to the writing, irrespective of Debussy’s aim to be resolutely French. In 1910, he had met a gypsy violinist in Budapest and been fascinated by his flamboyant style of playing. This may have subconsciously coloured the style and mood of parts of the sonata, especially the Finale.

Debussy composed this last movement first and it references material in the two preceding movements. The opening Allegro vivo is deeply felt with its typical theme of falling 3rds supported by ravishing harmony, while the middle movement Intermède: Fantasque et léger, seeks to dispel the sombre mood, being unusually bright and capricious.

While the finale (marked Très animé) undoubtedly returns to the earlier mood, it nevertheless builds to an ecstatic conclusion, which sounds a surprising and definite mood of optimism, in spite of Debussy’s own tragic circumstances. The premiere took place on May 5th 1917 with soloist Gaston Poulet accompanied by Debussy himself. It was to be his final public performance and he died on March 25th the following year, at the age of 58.

from notes by Brendan Carroll © 2014

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