Program Notes: Violinist Itzhak Perlman in Recital

An iconic violin virtuoso of the 20th century, Itzhak Perlman has continued his reign well into the 21st, and at 79, shows no signs of letting up, continuing to tour and record regularly. Winner of numerous GRAMMY™ and Emmy Awards, including a GRAMMY™ Lifetime Achievement Award, Perlman holds the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a National Medal of the Arts, among other honors. He performed at the inauguration of President Barack Obama and, accompanied by his frequent collaborator on piano, Rohan Da Silva, for Queen Elizabeth II. His passion for music education has led him to influence new generations of classical musicians at Juilliard and beyond. 

Perlman’s recital program at Benaroya Hall finds him joined by Da Silva and begins with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonata for Violin in G major, Op. 1, No. 6, BWV 1019. While Bach’s name is often synonymous with works for solo keyboard, which tremendously influenced the course of classical music, the composer was also an accomplished violinist and in his comparatively few sonatas, he laid new groundwork for composing in the instrument’s full range. 

BMV 1019 is one of Bach’s trio sonatas, meaning that it has two upper parts (the violin and the harpsichord’s upper register) and one lower part (the harpsichord’s lower register). Bach probably composed the original version of this sonata in the early 1720s, when he was working as the Kapellmeister (music director) of Köthen. However, we only know this piece from later manuscripts. Moreover, it exists in three versions, as Bach continued to rework it over several decades. The version performed this evening is the sonata’s final form, composed sometime before 1741.

Unlike the other five trio sonatas in this series, which are composed of four movements in the sequence slow-fast-slow-fast, BWV 1019 breaks with convention by including a fifth movement and beginning and ending with an allegro. The first fast movement is followed by an elegant largo that modulates into the third movement, a keyboard solo incorporating a dance-like structure. The following movement, an adagio, revolves around a fugue theme. The final movement resembles a jaunty dance called a gigue and features Bach’s celebrated use of counterpoint, in which each melodic line is rhythmically and structurally distinct.  

Richard Strauss wrote his Sonata for Violin in E-flat major, Op. 18 during a pivotal period of his development as a young composer. At age 23, Strauss had already been composing for 17 years, having completed several chamber pieces influenced by the earlier German Romantic Johannes Brahms. Tiring of traditional forms of the past, Strauss warmed to the work of composers such as Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt, favoring more creatively structured songs and symphonic tone poems. 

This lyrical sonata was Strauss’ farewell to chamber music, though in its lilting melodies and romantic color, it bears much in common with the fantasies he was writing around the same time. Strauss had recently met his future wife, Pauline de Ahna, and many critics perceived the exuberance of newfound love in the piece’s swooning, melismatic passages. Yet Strauss’ writings show that he rigorously planned out the work’s structure, which he modeled on the classical three-part sonata rather than the four-movement form more typical of symphonically influenced pieces.  

It opens with the piano playing a robust theme that is taken up by the violin, followed by a gliding theme introduced by the piano. The more emphatic melody and the romantic theme intertwine throughout the rest of this up-tempo movement. The second movement is marked “Improvisation—Andante cantabile,” though there is no actual “improvisation” here, only the suggestion of spontaneous rapture in the deeply Romantic middle section. In the stormy finale, the piano opens with a series of gloomy minor chords before restating the jaunty theme of the first movement, answered by the violin’s rapid ascending runs. The movement builds on cantering rhythms to a brisk coda before it reaches its conclusion. 

Now widely regarded as the quintessential German Romantic, composer and writer Robert Schumann had relatively little success in his lifetime, despite earning the admiration of contemporaneous composers such as Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt and his own wife, the composer and concert pianist Clara Schumann. Some scholars have argued that the public’s coldness toward Schumann’s work during his lifetime stemmed from his rejection of musical convention and his desire for more poetic modes of musical expression. 

Yet works such as his Fantasiestücke, Op. 73 have become beloved by audiences and musicians for their warmth, fluid mood changes and free-spirited creativity. Originally titled “soirée pieces,” this trio of “fantasy pieces” was written for clarinet, violin or cello and piano during an immensely productive year of Schumann’s life. The Fantasiestücke are part of a tradition known as Hausmusik, which is intended for enjoyment by amateur musicians at home, but they are no less beloved by concert musicians. 

The first piece in the set, Zart und mit Ausdruck (“Delicate and with expression”), begins as delicately sorrowful before transitioning suddenly into a major key for its final passages. The second piece, Lebhaft, leicht (“Lively, light”), continues in this optimistic mood, though some musical phrases return abruptly to melancholy. The last piece, Rasch und mit Feuer (“Rapidly and with fire”), allows the musicians to demonstrate their virtuosity in a coda that accelerates before a playful finish. 

Following his performance of these works, Perlman will end the concert with a selection of surprise musical “bonbons” that he will introduce from the stage. Expect a warm, spirited, engaging program.  

Joule Zelman © 2024 

Joule K. Zelman is a Seattle-based writer and researcher. In addition to her features and program notes for the Seattle Symphony, her work has appeared in The Stranger, Real Change and a variety of fiction magazines.