BRAHMS' VIOLIN SONATAS
Played by MARJORIE HAYWARD (Violin) and O'CONNOR MORRIS (Pianoforte)
ALL three of the Sonatas for violin and pianoforte which Brahms left can fairly claim to be favourites alike with performers and audiences. They are : all admirably laid out to display the best qualities : of both instruments, and it is often said that the parts might hare been written by a violinist, so well does each ono ' 'play itself,' in the phrase used. by fiddlers. The first was not published until 1880-his forty-seventh year, though we know that when he went to Schumann, with an introduction from Joachim, years earlier. a violin sonata was among the music he took with him. The first, in G Major, is certainly a work which shows him arrived at the full maturity of his powers, and in his most genial and kindly mood. It has the special interest of being closely associated with two of his songs—' Regenlied ' (Song of the Rain) and'Nachklang ' (Echo): the last movement begins with a theme like that used in the song to suggest the dripping rain.
There are three movements. The first begins dreamily with a shy theme in the violin, out of which a more energetic mood soon wakes; the second theme is moro impulsive and soaring, and at the end there is a third, gracious and slight, dying away very softly before a new form of the second theme closes the movement.
The next movement begins very broadly with the pianoforte alone, and after the violin has repeated his theme, there is a more lively section, the stately opening returning after it. The theme begins as though it were to have some kinship with the first movement, but goes on in a much more flowing measure ; it leads in a very natural way into the second theme, and it, in turn, makes way for a very beautiful reminder of the slow movement: a brief echo of it is heard again just before the end.