SongHa | 최송하
B. Bartok | Sonata No.1 for Violin and Piano Sz.75
I. Allegro Appassionato 00:00
II. Adagio 14:08
III. Allegro 25:58
Salle Bourgie, Montreal, Canada
29th April 2023
Violin : SongHa Choi
Piano : Carson Becke
* Prize for the best interpretation of a sonata in the semi-finals (CMIM 2023)
Contact | songhachoi00@gmail.com
• About the Piece •
"I will attempt this, for me, unusual combination (of violin and piano) only if both instruments always had seperate themes" - November 1921, from Bartok's letter to Jelly d'Aranyi
Until the early 1900s, Hungarian folk had been widely recognised as Romani Gypsy music by the public (as presented in Hungarian Rhapsodies by Liszt). However, when Kodaly and Bartok went on a field trip to collect Magyar folk tunes in 1908, they had realised that the melodies were rather based on pentatonic scales, similar to those of Central Asian and Anatolian folk traditions.
By the 1920s, Bartok had already been acquainted and influenced by composers such as Debussy, Stravinsky and Strauss. He continued his ethnomusicological research in countries such as Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia, but after the war, the tense political situation in Hungary among its neighbour countries prohibited Bartok to continue his folk music research outside Hungary. Having experienced the impact of the first world war on the division of Hungary as well as witnessing severe destruction of his birthplace Banat, his writing style reached its peak of dissonance, aggression and complexity.
The two violin sonatas were written in 1921-1922, following the birth of The Wooden Prince and the Miraculous Mandarine. Until then, he had taken a couple of years away from composition, after severe disappointment from an unsuccessful participation in the Hungariam Fine Arts Commission Competition. The sonatas were dedicated to Jelly d'Aranyi as a token of his infatuation over her and her violin playing. She had highly contributed with her suggestions for bowings and violinistic markings. They gave successful premieres of the works in London, with the composer himself on the piano, and the reviews and reception by the public were glowing.
The Violin Sonata No. 1 follows a traditional sonata structure, in which there are classic 3 fast-slow-fast movements. A vague sonata form appears in the 1st movement, followed by a slow, lyrical 2nd movement and finishing the work on a high note in a rondo form with fiery coda.
Bartok himself set the sonata in "C-sharp minor” but the tonality is extremely clouded from the beginning. The work expresses its top presence in the composer’s “expressionist” period, when he came closest to the ideals of the Second Viennese School of Berg, Webern and Schoenberg. As demonstrated in his early sketches, he had no intention of considering a typical conversational duet between the two instruments which was common in the genre, and he did so by gifting each of them with very different elements and functions. The balanced concoction of its improvisatory and melodious folk themes, modal and dissonant harmonies, the constant tempi change and various use of rhythmic pattern changes helped Bartok to stamp his own initials in this new style of writing.
(Written by SongHa Choi)
