Beethoven: Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, in D, Op. 12, No. 1
Ames Town & Gown performers: Frank Levy and Bin Huang
November 3, 2017
Performance Recording (movements 1, 2, and 3 in separate files)
Notes by Karl E. Gwiasda
Beethoven is so highly exalted as a composer that it is easy to overlook that he first claimed the public’s attention for his prowess as a pianist. To be sure, he did publish pieces during his earliest years in Vienna, but those compositions were intended to satisfy the market for music that could be played at home. Many of them, of course, were for solo piano. Most of the rest were duo-sonatas or trios. In general, these early works have a good-natured, at times even playful, quality that is far from the heroic manner that has become most closely associated with Beethoven.
Among the most endearing examples of Beethoven’s early style are the three violin sonatas that he wrote over 1797-1798. When they were published as a set in 1799 as the composer’s Opus 12, they carried a dedication to Antonio Salieri, from whom Beethoven had been taking lessons in vocal composition.
During the mid-18th century, sonatas combining violin and keyboard were conceived as being works for a keyboard instrument with the violin providing a subordinate, decorative accompaniment—like the back-up for a present-day pop singer. Mozart, however, began treating the two instruments as equal participants in his later sonatas. This precedent became the one that Beethoven followed in his own sonatas
The parity between the two players is evident from the very beginning of the D major sonata. After an attention-grabbing introduction, the violin announces the first of the several themes that fill the initial movement, which is marked Allegro con brio (“Fast, with verve”). The music overflows with unflagging energy before finally arriving at an emphatic close.
Beethoven sets his slow movement as a Theme with Variations, a form to which he was particularly partial—as is witnessed by such earlier and later masterpieces as the final movement of the Eroica symphony (1805) and the “Diabelli” Variations for piano (1823). The theme itself is first stated by the piano and then taken up by the violin. Playing in triplets, the piano launches the first variation. The violin assumes the starring role in the second variation. The next variation appears as a dramatic exchange between the two instruments. The mood changes entirely for the final variation, which places the violin and piano in a gentle and intimate dialogue.
The sonata closes in a sportive rondo whose repeating theme is first stated by the piano. At the very end, the music seems almost to lose its way before snapping to a firm conclusion—an illustration of Beethoven’s love of musical jokes.