This week’s music will be the final two movements of the Sonata in A Major for violin and piano by Caesar Franck, performed by John Donkersloot on piano and myself on violin.

As I mentioned when we listened to the first and second movements last week, Franck presents musical ideas in the earlier movements that are then recycled throughout the remainder of the sonata. The third movement is more chromatic and temperamentally unpredictable than the first two movements, but it also revisits the primary themes that were introduced in the second movement and the opening line of the first movement. The movement is titled Fantasia; listen for the violin’s virtuosic solos at the start.

The fourth and final movement is pure lyricism, pure Romanticism, pure elegance. The initial theme, which flows lightly and gracefully through the opening bars, is presented in a canon. A canon is a musical form in which two instruments play the same melody, but in a staggered form (one following the other, always a few bars behind). After a brief detour into the stormy fantasies of the third movement, Franck brings back the lyrical theme to close the sonata with a swelling, soaring A major flourish.

Enjoy!

T