Vecerina, Valeria / Contaldo, Giulia
Szymanowski, Elgar: Sonatas For Violin And Piano
The violin sonatas of Szymanowski and Elgar bring two latitudes of the European spirit into dialogue. In the Sonata in D minor op. 9, the young Polish composer absorbs Brahms, Franck and Scriabin, yet drives cyclic form towards a mobile harmonic sensuality, close to Symbolism and to his later timbral metamorphoses. The Sonata in E minor op. 82 belongs to Elgars inward season after the Great War: at Brinkwells, the public voice of Edwardian England withdraws into chamber music, amid memory, reticence and wounded nobility. The return of the Romance near the coda turns the ending into a tribute to Marie Joshua. The programme reveals two farewells to Romanticism: in Szymanowski, incandescent matter seeks the future/ in Elgar, an autumnal light transfigures the past without effacing its wound.