Szymanowski, Elgar: Sonatas for Violin and Piano

The programme brings together two sonatas for violin and piano which, though belonging to the same instrumental constellation, seem to arise from different latitudes of the European spirit. The Sonata in D minor op. 9 by Karol Szymanowski was born within the restless climate of an aristocratic, cultivated and cosmopolitan youth, still nourished by German Romanticism and already inclined towards a more modern harmonic sensuality. The Sonata in E minor op. 82 by Edward Elgar, by contrast, belongs to a late, inward, almost autumnal season, in which the public voice of Edwardian England withdraws into the more secret precinct of chamber music. In both works, the sonata appears as an inner theatre in which violin and piano act as two kindred consciences, whether in accord or divided by a tension that seeks no immediate resolution.

Szymanowski came from Tymoszówka, a borderland between Polish memory, Russian culture and an Oriental imaginary. That landscape, more mental than geographical, would long nourish his art. In Warsaw he came into contact with Zygmunt Noskowski and with the milieu of Młoda Polska, a movement that expressed the desire to refound Polish identity through an art open to Europe, modern without renouncing memory. The Sonata in D minor op. 9 belongs to this phase of exalted and febrile apprenticeship. Dedicated to Bronisław Gromadzki, a companion from the Elisavetgrad years and an amateur violinist, it was subsequently associated with the first affirmation of Paweł Kochański and Artur Rubinstein. Kochański would later become an essential interlocutor for the violin music of Szymanowski, a mediator between sonic imagination and instrumental hand.

The writing of the sonata reveals the lineages that the young composer was absorbing. The Brahmsian model offers an idea of formal solidity, while César Franck suggests a cyclical conception of thematic material. No less important is the lesson of Scriabin, perceptible as an inclination towards a fiery, mobile harmonic substance, enveloped in a feverish chiaroscuro. Yet the work does not live by genealogies alone. From the opening Allegro moderato one senses a personality tending to expand the inheritance received. The piano opens and sustains the discourse with an almost orchestral density, made of full chords and deep resonances; the violin enters the texture like a voice emerging from a sonic mass already in motion. The tonality of D minor becomes a place of emotional gravity. Sonata form remains recognisable, yet its profile is traversed by a freer, almost narrative breath. The themes transform, thicken, and change colour under the pressure of the pianistic fabric. One perceives that sense of expansion which would become increasingly characteristic of Szymanowski, a tendency to conceive form as an organism in metamorphosis. The pathos is still late Romantic, but its light is oblique, filtered, already close to Symbolist territories.

The Andantino tranquillo e dolce is the lyrical centre of the sonata and perhaps its most revealing page. The piano traces a transparent, almost glasslike surface upon which the violin lays a broad and absorbed line of song. Here sweetness does not coincide with sentimental surrender. It is rather a quality of suspension, a lingering of the gaze before form resumes its course. The central episode, more animated, assumes the value of a miniature scherzo. The pizzicatos of the violin and the lightness of the figuration introduce an unexpected radiance, as though, for a moment, melancholy withdrew to reveal a clearer landscape. The return of the initial atmosphere preserves it as memory. The Finale. Allegro molto, quasi presto leads the discourse towards an impetuous conclusion. The brilliance of the violin writing is evident, yet it never assumes the character of virtuosity for its own sake. The motor energy, at times close to a dance impulse, is grafted onto a sonata-rondo that combines élan and control. The imitative counterpoint and the concluding intensification show an already remarkable command of resources, although the principal fascination of the work lies in its condition as a threshold. The sonata looks backwards and forwards at the same instant. Behind it stand Brahms, Franck and Scriabin; before it, it allows one to glimpse the more audacious world of Myths, of Nocturne and Tarantella, of those works in which the violin would become for Szymanowski an instrument of enchantment, arabesque and timbral intoxication.

Elgar arrives at the Sonata in E minor op. 82 from an almost opposite position. His artistic identity was by then fully defined. Elgar had succeeded in giving British music a new symphonic dignity. Yet the sonata belongs to a period in which that public voice becomes more reserved. The Great War had altered the moral landscape of Europe, and in Elgar that trauma assumes the form of a pensive withdrawal. At Brinkwells, in Sussex, immersed in the woods near Fittleworth, the composer found a physical and spiritual refuge. The sonata was born within the same creative horizon as the Quartet in E minor op. 83 and the Quintet in A minor op. 84, and it ideally foreshadows the Cello Concerto in E minor op. 85. These works share a crepuscular light and a wounded nobility.

The dedication to Marie Joshua introduces into the Sonata in E minor op. 82 an intimate resonance. A friend of the Elgar family and a figure connected with the musical circle frequented by the composer, she received the proposal of dedication shortly before her sudden death. The celebrated Elgarian allusion to the golden sounds of the score captures an essential aspect of the work. The sonata seeks neither aggressive experiments nor programmatic ruptures. Its modernity is inward. It arises from the capacity to set a seemingly traditional language vibrating until it becomes porous, traversed by shadows, reticences and memories. Every phrase seems to withhold something, as though musical discourse knew the modesty of what cannot be said in direct form. The opening Allegro bears the character of a resolute gesture, yet that resolution is not translated into heroic exteriority. The opening theme has an energetic, almost impetuous profile, and yet its force is immediately tempered by an underlying melancholy. The piano articulates a vigorous, almost symphonic presence. The violin responds with broad lines, now passionate, now withdrawn into more pensive inflections. Elgar governs the dialogue with masterly economy. Melodic expansion, an unmistakable trait of his art, is here subjected to a more severe discipline. The discourse proceeds through non-violent contrasts, through gradual accretions, through phrases that seem to open towards proclamation and then prefer the chiaroscuro of reserve. The Romance. Andante occupies a place of special delicacy. Lady Elgar recognised in it the magical charm of the woods of Fittleworth, and that image truly illuminates the score. The Elgarian wood, however, is a genius loci, a moral presence. The violin sings with collected grace, while the piano disposes around the melody an aura of soft resonances, like leaves tempering the footfall. The indication Romance might suggest a sentimental confession, yet the page avoids any decorative languor. Its tenderness is guarded, almost modest. The heart of the movement is more intensely lyrical, but here too passion remains filtered through a noble composure. In the Finale. Allegro non troppo the sonata recovers motion and impetus without abandoning its introspective nature. The writing displays a clear, almost liberating rhythmic vitality. But Elgar does not resolve the work in triumph. The return, near the coda, of an echo of the Romance assumes the value of a homage to Marie Joshua and transforms the conclusion into an act of memory. The tonality of E, brightened in the final perspective, does not efface the wound of the initial E minor. It transfigures it. Here Elgar elevates remembrance without rhetoric.

The juxtaposition of Szymanowski and Elgar reveals two different forms of Romantic leave-taking. In the Polish composer, Romanticism is still incandescent matter, traversed by the desire to shed its skin. Tradition is absorbed, impelled towards a new sensuality, prepared to become colour, perfume, arabesque. In the English composer, by contrast, Romanticism becomes a memory conscious of itself, a voice that has already known public greatness and now prefers the inwardness of the chamber. Szymanowski opens a door. Elgar half-opens a window onto twilight. The one seeks the future in the fever of youth; the other measures the future through the dignity of remembrance. The violin and the piano, in these two sonatas, are not simply complementary instruments. They are personages in a moral dialogue. At times the violin seems to embody the song of the individual, the line that dares to expose itself; at times the piano appears as memory, architecture, harmonic destiny. Yet the functions are continually exchanged. The piano sings, the violin accompanies. From this reciprocity arises the most profound meaning of the programme. Two works separated by place and temperament converge in an idea of chamber music as the art of close listening. Thus the Sonata in D minor op. 9 and the Sonata in E minor op. 82 answer one another across time like two inclined mirrors. In one burns the restless light of dawn; in the other lingers the gentler gold of sunset.

Giuliano Marco Mattioli © 2026