Aitken/Copland/Piston/Schoenfield/Schuller: Works for Violin
Liner Notes   Cat. No. 80334     Release Date: 1987-01-01

Robert Davidovici, violin; Steven De Groote, piano; Paul Schoenfield, piano

Perhaps from the habit of our nineteenth-century parlor-music tradition, perhaps from the frustration of trying to get orchestral works performed, American composers seem to have remained more active in the genre of the chamber sonata than their European counterparts. In America, the genre has received particular attention from composers of a classical or neoclassical bent, as the works on this recording, varied as they are in style and technique, bear out.

In 1945, when he wrote the Sonatina, Walter Piston (1894-1976) was in the middle of his thirty-three-year teaching career at Harvard and had recently been relieved of his wartime duties as a civilian air-raid warden. The flight of Schoenberg and Stravinsky to America prior to World War II had brought Piston into contact with their music, and the Sonatina was among the first fruits of this influence.

Gunther Schuller (b. 1925) is a composer of great versatility in terms of musical techniques. Given Schuller's lifelong involvement with jazz, it's surprising that his Recitative and Rondo is actually less jazz-related than other pieces on this record. For all the virtuosity required, the piece has a delicate, poetic quality to it, augmented in the Recitative by the dramatic effect of a lengthy violin solo before the piano's sudden entrance.

The Nocturne by Aaron Copland (b. 1900) is a neglected gem, written in 1926 for one of Nadia Boulanger's afternoon teas; so prestigious were these events considered among Parisian society that James Joyce made a point of attending its premiere. For all its gentleness and uniformity of mood, the Nocturne contains in germinal form all the features of Copland's early style (prior to his turn towards a "vernacular style" in 1936).

A careful classicism is rarely absent from the music of Hugh Aitken (b. 1924), despite his wide range of emotional expression. This Partita for Solo Violin from 1968 is characteristic of Aitken in its division into brief movements, its repetition of short motives, and its dramatic contrasts between groups of gestures.

To the varied program of works on this record, Paul Schoenfield's (b. 1947) Three Country Fiddle Pieces makes a stunning encore. Originally written with amplification and added percussion (but quite viable without them), this 1980 piece draws on the styles of jazz, blues, and country diddling, blending them and surrounding them with Ivesian dissonances in the piano that seem curiously appropriate (Ives was a ragtime player himself).

Robert Davidovici

Aitken/Copland/Piston/Schoenfield/Schuller: Works for Violin

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Track Listing

Sonatina: I. Allegro leggiero
Walter Piston
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Sonatina: II. Adagio espressivo
Walter Piston
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Sonatina: III. Allegro vivo
Walter Piston
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Recitative and Rondo: I. Recitative
Gunther Schuller
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Recitative and Rondo: II. Rondo
Gunther Schuller
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Nocturne
Aaron Copland
Buy
Partita for Solo Violin: I. Allegro vigoroso
Hugh Aitken
Buy
Partita for Solo Violin: II. Lento e sostenuto
Hugh Aitken
Buy
Partita for Solo Violin: III. Molto moderato
Hugh Aitken
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Partita for Solo Violin: IV. Grandioso, liberamente
Hugh Aitken
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Partita for Solo Violin: V. Lento e sostenuto
Hugh Aitken
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Partita for Solo Violin: VI. Allegro vigoroso
Hugh Aitken
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Three Country Fiddle Pieces: I. Who Let the Cat Out Last Night?
Paul Schoenfield
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Three Country Fiddle Pieces: II. Pining for Betsy
Paul Schoenfield
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Three Country Fiddle Pieces: III. En Ciudad Juarez
Paul Schoenfield
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