Joshua Bell’s Sonatas++ Recital Program

Violinist Joshua Bell (from his San Francisco Symphony Calendar page)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall the San Francisco Symphony continued its 2022–23 Great Performers Series with a violin recital by Joshua Bell. According to the program book, Bell had prepared a program of three sonatas for violin and piano to be performed with Peter Dugan as his accompanying pianist. However, the “fine print” on that program page included the following sentence: “Additional works will be announced from the stage.”

The first half of the program was devoted to sonatas from two consecutive centuries. It began with the second of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 12 sonatas, composed in the key of A major, which was completed in 1798. This was followed by Robert Schumann’s Opus 121 (second) violin sonata in D minor, composed in 1851.

The second half of the program presented the third sonata, written during the next consecutive century, Claude Debussy’s G minor sonata, composed near the end of his life in 1917. This was preceded by the first of the “additional works,” the second (“Nigun”) of the three movements of Ernest Bloch’s Baal Shem suite, composed in 1923. The Debussy quartet was followed by Béla Bartók’s first violin rhapsody, composed in 1928. Bell and Dugan then returned for two encore selections. The first of these was the first of the three “Romances” that Clara Schumann composed for her Opus 22. This was followed by Henryk Wieniawski’s Opus 16, “Scherzo-Tarantella.”

This made for a fully engaging evening with no shortage of either technical inventiveness or intense expressiveness. I have to confess that I have a particular preference for the Beethoven Opus 12 sonatas. I tend to find these to be the most intimate of the composer’s chamber music compositions. I also enjoy the amusement of discovering that the title pages of all of the violin sonatas identified the works as “Sonata for Piano and Violin.” Beethoven clearly saw himself as the pianist when these sonatas were first performed, and last night I was delighted to experience a reading in which pianist and violinist (to use Beethoven’s priority ordering) were on equal terms! In that respect it is worth noting that Debussy played the piano part for the premiere of his sonata, joined by Gaston Poulet on violin; and this work was also very much an “equal terms” composition.

Schumann did not pay much attention to chamber music until 1842, which is often called his “chamber music year,” since he focused almost entirely on composing chamber music. He then returned to chamber music in 1851, composing both his first violin sonata in A minor (Opus 105) and Opus 121. His final sonata was composed in the key of A minor in 1853. It was not published during his lifetime and is cataloged as WoO 27.

None of these sonatas have received very much attention, and I am pretty sure that this was my first encounter with Opus 121 in a recital setting. Both Bell and Dugan made a clear case that this was a composition that did not deserve such neglect. (I also appreciated the “symmetry” of the overall program, with Robert before the intermission and Clara for an encore selection.)

I feel it is also fair to observe that Bell was as much in his comfort zone in introducing the works that were not listed in the program book as he was in performing all of his selections. His verbal introductions to the unlisted compositions provided just the right amount of dispositional context. I found his account of his own past teacher and that teacher’s teacher to be delightfully engaging. That was the road that led to the Wieniawski encore, whose performance made it clear that Bell was saving his most dazzling fireworks for his final offering.