Roger Sessions: Music for Violin & Piano

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David Holzman and David Bowlin capture all the beautiful instability of a composer well worth catching up with — Gramophone Magazine, January 2016

Release Date: 25th Sep 2015
Catalogue No: BRIDGE9453
Label: Bridge
Length: 62 minutes

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Sessions: Duo for Violin & Piano

Work length14:00

$3.00

$3.85

David Bowlin, David Holzman

Sessions: Adagio for piano

Work length3:23

$1.00

$1.30

David Holzman

Sessions: Waltz for Brenda

Work length1:26

$1.00

$1.30

David Holzman

Sessions: Violin Sonata

Work length29:53

$6.00

$7.80

David Bowlin

I. Tempo moderato, con ampiezza e liberamente

Track length9:53

$2.00

$2.60

II. Molto vivo

Track length6:10

$1.00

$1.30

III. Adagio e dolcemente

Track length9:13

$2.00

$2.60

IV. Alla marcia vivace

Track length4:37

$1.00

$1.30

Sessions: Piano Sonata No. 2

Work length13:28

$3.00

$3.90

David Holzman

I. Allegro con fuoco

Track length4:30

$1.00

$1.30

II. Lento

Track length4:29

$1.00

$1.30

III. Misurato e pesante

Track length4:29

$1.00

$1.30

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This new recording presents three major Roger Sessions scores in stunningly virtuosic performances.

A sonata in all but name, the Duo sees Sessions casting off the Stravinskian residue that had typified his earliest efforts. Rhythmically sturdy, the music provides something of a justification for the 'American Brahms' moniker critics routinely applied to Sessions.

The fiendishly difficult solo Sonata for Violin is in four interlinked movements. It is a “rhapsodic” (Sessions’ word) score, that is among the finest works in the solo violin literature.

Sessions’ masterful Second Sonata was completed in the days following World War 2. Andor Foldes, the commissioning pianist, considered the 2nd movement “almost Chopinesque”, while the finale, a sardonic toccata (Sessions called it “a goose step”), is a caricature of the Nazi Stormtroopers he had seen firsthand in Berlin. Though some of the contrasting music put Sessions in mind of the doleful-sounding foghorns in San Francisco Bay, the vehemence unleashed ultimately sweeps all else before it, topping off one of the most trenchant, dynamic piano works in the American literature.

Reviews

January 2016

David Holzman and David Bowlin capture all the beautiful instability of a composer well worth catching up with

Roger Sessions: Music for Violin & Piano

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