Sonata
For Violin and PianoCommentary
Interview
Download score
Commentary
This Sonata was composed at the request of the duo made up of violinist Joan Espina and pianist Blanca Calvo, to whom it is dedicated. Written between the months of June and July 2004, its goal was to be premiered in Sofia, Bulgaria, at a Spanish music concert organized by the Spanish Embassy within the framework of the Spanishness Feast. The premiere took place in the Concert Hall of the Bulgarian National Radio, on October 11, 2004.
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Blanca Calvo and Joan Espina, dedicatees and protagonists of the premiere of the Sonata
The Sonata is the last of a group of works for violin and piano that runs through my catalog since my first premiered work (Movement, from 1978), goes through the two extensive series of Variations and Theme (on the Theme with Variations "Ah! Vous dirai-je, Maman", by W. A. Mozart), composed in 1990, and is completed with Six metaplasms, for two violins, also from 1990, and especially with the Concerto for violin and orchestra, from 1987. What is not strange, given that both instruments, violin and piano, together with the harpsichord, were the ones that marked my entire stage of training which, at a given moment, was oriented towards composition to the detriment of instrumental practice. However, many hours of study and deep knowledge of the difficult technique of the string instruments remain, on the one hand, and of the no less complex piano writing, on the other.
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Program of the premiere of the Sonata
Composed in a single line lasting just over a quarter of an hour, it actually consists of four movements that follow one another without interruption, and of which the last two are nothing more than a development of the material that appears in the first two, subjected to a process of re-elaboration and amplification.
The four movements follow one another in a contrasting manner in terms of character: slow – fast - slow - fast, which in a way constitutes a way of recreating the old sonata da chiesa, from which all the great violín literature of the period classical and romantic. Of course, this recreation is nothing more than structural, since all the melodic and harmonic content moves within a free atonality that is in turn controlled by a thematic development of great classical rigor.
Greeting after the premiere of the Sonata (Sofia, Bulgaria, October 11, 2004)
First page of the Sonata for violin and piano
Interview
I always compose what I want
By Dafna Plamenova
On November 11, 2004, the Bulgarian magazine Lik published the interview conducted in Sofia by Dafna Plamenova, whose Spanish translation can be accessed below.
