Violin Sonatas -R.Strauss, Rota, Respighi : Van Keulen, Brautigam

THE VIOLIN SONATA AROUND 1900
Isabelle van Keulen & Ronald Brautigam

The year 2009 marks Rota's death thirty years ago, the birth of Respighi 130 years ago and Strauss' death sixty years ago. At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century the violin sonata experienced a considerable renaissance. A funda- mentally conservative genre, it suddenly sparkled with vitality. Mozart developed its classical formula: violin and piano are two equal partners in dialogue with neither the piano being reduced to a mere accompanist nor the violin being reduced to mere coloring of the melody voice; a three-movement-pattern; the first movement being based on the so called sonata form with two themes of clear-cut atmospheric contrast and their development.
The success of the wide-spread violin Sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven made this canonized form so intimidating for nearly a century that composers could hardly deal with it creatively. However Schumann and Brahms faced the challenge with bravura. After them development gained new momentum. The form of the violin sonata was either rejected as a whole or became a field of creative experiments, on an international scale. The relationship to tradition is the crucial point of the resulting works and it makes up part of their fascination. The works in this album are examples of three different ways of coming to terms with desire to change, the violin sonata was experiencing around 1900. ( challenge )

Richard Strauss: Sonata for Violin and Piano in E flat major op. 18 (1887)
Nono Rota: Sonata for Violin and Piano (1936/37)
Ottorino Respighi: Sonata for Violin and Piano in b minor (1916/17)

Isabelle Van Keulen, violin
Ronald Brautigam, piano

Recorded 25-27/03/2008