Dohnányi: Violin Sonata in C sharp minor, Op. 21

Hagai Shaham and Arnon Erez have been enthusiastically acclaimed for their dazzling duo performances: their infectiously relaxed bravado and continual flexibility belying their impeccable ensemble. For their latest disc they turn to two composers who are seminal figures in the development of Eastern European music during the early twentieth century.

Dohnányi was one of the pivotal figures in Hungary’s musical life. He composed a number of significant pieces for the violin, including two violin concertos; his most important chamber work for violin and piano is the Violin Sonata in C sharp minor Op 21, composed in 1912. Dohnányi was by then thirty-five years of age, and the Sonata is a fully mature work showing his individual development of stylistic traits of Brahms and Liszt combined with a structural economy which reflects the close study of Brahms’s sonatas. Also recorded here is Dohnányi’s most overtly folk-influenced work, Ruralia hungarica, and a movement from his First Orchestral Suite, in F sharp minor Op 19, Romanza, arranged as a thoroughly idiomatic piece for violin and piano by Jascha Heifetz.

In the first days of World War I Dohnányi’s native Hungary was invaded by the Russian army, which seemed for a time to herald the end of Austrian dominance in the region. This portentous event provided the creative spark for Leoš Janácek’s Violin Sonata (his only surviving violin sonata; two very early ones he composed in Dresden and Vienna in 1880 are lost), at least according to Janácek himself. Other works by Janácek heard in this recital include early pieces from his student years, and an arrangement of the delicate mood study ‘A blown-away Leaf’ from the celebrated piano work On the Overgrown Path.

The viola works on this recording fuse lyricism with virtuosity, and sometimes invoke folkloric moments as well as more rhapsodic flights. Martinů’s 1955 Sonata plays on elements of folk music and rhapsody, as well as a toccata-like intensity and a pervasive feeling of nostalgia. Kodály’s Adagio is an early work, highly expressive and richly romantic, whilst his compatriot Dohnányi wrote a Sonata of mature distinction, employing variations and transformed themes to magical effect. Joachim, upholder of the German violin school, also composed, and in his Hebrew Melodies crafts great pathos, whilst Enescu’s Concertstück fuses the lyrical with the dashing, as befi ts a competition test piece.

Is there any Hungarian music in the twentieth century, outside Bartók, Kodály, Kurtág and Ligeti? This record replies with a resounding "yes". But this answer raises other questions: what is "Hungarian music"? On what grounds do these composers justify their claim to the title "Hungarian"? Do their works exhale a specific "Hungarian" aroma? Each of the composers here represented provides an original answer to these questions. György Terebesi here reveals his Magyar soul in his interpretations of these major Hungarian works.