MAIER FRANCK SCHUMANN
Sonatas for Violin and Piano
For a long time, Tim and I have wanted to record the Sonata in A major by César Franck.
We’ve been playing, growing, and changing alongside this masterpiece for over twenty-five years. The piece, like all great music, feels like a living thing that reveals itself and continually fuels and inspires you. It, along with the “Kreutzer” Sonata, the Schubert Fantasy, and a few major duo pieces, were not only beloved pillars of our repertoire but almost “identity” pieces for Duo Concertante – musical lenses through which we see ourselves in different ways in the course of a lifetime.
Pairing other works with the Franck was challenging. From beginning to end the piece is gripping, unrelenting, powerful, and emotionally vast. Written as a wedding present for the Belgium violinist Eugene Ysaÿe, someone has said (not certain who, but it rings true to me) that the work itself depicts a long-term relationship. As partners in music and life, we certainly can relate to the evolving emotions in the music that may be inspired by a lasting union: The first movement – with its dreamy, silky, sensual themes – evokes an, as yet, unfulfilled longing; a stormy, intense, rollercoaster of passion bursts forth in the second; the Fantasia movement, full of searching, despair, sadness, and reflection, may mark the disillusionment stage; and finally, the triumphant and joyous finale movement, with the primary theme in canon, perhaps depicts two independent voices finding equality and acceptance. Because of its epic/saga-like scale, the Sonata should be experienced as a complete work to fully appreciate the enormity of what it conveys.
To fill out the disc, we settled on two shorter romantic works – the Sonata in A minor by Robert Schumann and Amanda Maier’s B minor Sonata. Like the Franck, we have played the Schumann a lot over the years, but for me, personally, my appreciation of Schumann has grown perhaps more than with any other composer (JS Bach excepted). I remember as a student I read the deeply affecting biography Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius, by Peter Ostwald. It conveyed with incredible detail, backed up by letters, house and individual diaries, Robert’s day-to-day, excruciating internal struggles. At the time, I don’t think I knew enough of his music to understand how its power is intrinsically connected with this depth of feeling – an almost intense revealing of truth. The A minor Sonata, considered by Robert himself to be flawed, is unsettling, heart-breaking, exquisitely beautiful, and unmistakably his.
I became familiar with the Swedish violinist/composer Amanda Maier (1852-1893) as an external examiner while reviewing University of Toronto doctoral candidate Jennifer Martyn’s excellent thesis. Amanda Maier had an impressive performance career throughout Europe as a young concert violinist and her handful of existing compositions show an exceptional talent and distinct musical voice. After a student of mine decided to learn the B minor Sonata, I got to really know the piece and suggested to Tim that we learn it. We started programming it often as we grew to love its verve, poetry, originality, and energy – truly an astoundingly masterful work from a then twenty-three-year-old Maier. Sadly, Amanda Maier’s performance career virtually stopped, and her composing slowed to a trickle after her marriage to composer/pianist Julius Röntgen and the birth of their two children. We believe that this work deserves not only a revival on its own terms but, in relation to this album, stands up alongside the Franck and Schumann in any context.
