Edward ELGAR
Sonata for Violin and Piano
Gerald FINZI
Elegy for Violin and Piano
William WALTON
Violin Sonata
Daniel Hope (violin);
Simon Mulligan (piano)
NIMBUS NI 5666 [62.10]
Crotchet
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Elgar's Sonata for Violin and Piano wastes no time asserting its
allegiance to late Romanticism. Intense Brahmsian themes and legato figures
alternate with the serene. The opening bars burst into the room like partygoers
tipsy from Liebfraumilch. Written at the end of World War I, this piece is
a lament for what Elgar perceived as lost innocence. His approach involves
great variation in tonal shades, producing fin-de-siècle motives like
nostalgia and regret. At once point, the violin actually sounds like sobbing.
Remarkably, violinist Daniel Hope and pianist Simon Mulligan elicit subtlety
from Elgar where there is precious little. Hope twists mood and accent from
the many scalar ascents, sometimes shaking them when they require melodrama,
other times coaxing them onward like shy children. Movement II (Romance and
Adagio) suggests a dance-like tune at first, but one that never breaks into
exhilaration, as if content to sit on the sidelines and reflect. Through
dominant chords and major key shifts, Elgar expresses courage in the last
movement, but tempered by perplexity with the calamitous twentieth century.
The musicians are utterly faithful to this music, giving it the melodic
expression its calls for and deserves.
Gerald Finzi's 1940 Elegy for Violin and Piano keens for the lost
pastoral and romantic spirit, both squashed by the encroaching World War
II. Romanticism runs thick in Finzi's blood. (He set Wordsworth's Ode:
Intimations of Immortality.) This piece's melancholic first theme
engenders images of youths pining for the unobtainable. There are several
spontaneous shifts in tonality, such as the one about two minutes into the
piece, then one a minute later. Such shifts keep the lyricism strong in the
same way a lyric poem connects its nature description to the poet's psychological
state. It returns several times to its first theme, varying the piano
accompaniment only slightly. The performers expertly convey the dense layers
of regret in this brief piece. It has a mid-nineteenth century feel, perhaps
because Finzi believed he could "shake hands with a good friend over the
centuries." There is no trace of dissonance. Even when the violin wails at
its peak-the lament as the war intrudes-the music doesn't smooth its furrowed
brow. Its ff strains rave on, but with a sharper sense of urgency.
The penultimate melody doesn't depart radically in style from the opening
one, but instead dwindles tastefully to its death, like a verismo
opera heroine.
Like those of his compatriots Gerald Finzi and Edward Elgar, William Walton's
Violin Sonata is a romantic piece, but one with dense layers of complexity.
Although his piece crosses similar territory to theirs, it explores higher
ground and deeper caverns. Its thirty minutes are like a thirty-day love
affair, filled with tempests, ecstasy, and reflection. In the first movement
surprising shifts in tempo and volume make the music a poor candidate for
a late night soporific. The lead melody never meanders but instead changes
its textures like a leaf through the seasons. Just when the intensity seems
about to break, Walton slows it so it arches like a caressed cat. Violinist
Daniel Hope and pianist Simon Mulligan play the variations in II with such
skill that they don't seem like variations at all, but rather thinly connected
themes. It begins with a lurking tension then explodes dramatically, with
the melody propped by staccato chords. This is Waltonian drama rather than
Elgarian melodrama. At one point, the violin plays a haunting pizzicato,
a segment that Hope plays with the loopy abandon he learned from his Schnittke
and Weill interpretations (NI 5582). Don't miss this one. It's one of the
great twentieth century violin sonatas.
Peter Bates
