Galvin Recital: Two Violin Sonatas; Two Centuries

Patrick Galvin and Connor Buckley taking a bow after their performance of Prokofiev’s Opus 80 sonata (screen shot from last night’s video stream)

Last night violinist Patrick Galvin returned to Old First Presbyterian Church to follow up on his last Old First Concerts (O1C) recital given about a year ago. He organized his program around two sonatas, each from a different century. The first half of the program was dominated almost entirely by Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 80 (first) sonata in F minor. This was followed, after the intermission, by Robert Schumann’s Opus 105 (first) sonata in A minor. Galvin’s accompanist at the piano was Connor Buckley.

Neither of these sonatas receives the attention it deserves. Prokofiev spent about eight years working on Opus 80; and, by the time he had finished, he had already completed his Opus 94a (second) violin sonata in D major, which was basically a rearrangement of his Opus 94 flute sonata (also in D major), in 1943, while Opus 80 was not completed until 1946. Taken together, the two sonatas provide a study in sharp contrasts: Opus 94a was all bright sunshine, while Opus 80 presented Prokofiev at his darkest. Both Galvin and Buckley clearly appreciated that dark rhetoric, making for one of the more harrowing listening experiences to be encountered at an O1C performance.

Schumann’s sonata, like Prokofiev’s, was composed relatively late in his life. It was completed in 1851, not long before Johannes Brahms, then twenty years old, would join his household. Schumann was not particularly satisfied with Opus 105 and completed his second sonata, Opus 121 in D minor, only a few months later. Sadly, neither of these sonatas receives very much attention on the recital circuit. Nevertheless, both Galvin and Buckley gave a sufficiently engaging account of Opus 105 to suggest that Schumann’s own opinion of the music may not have been justified.

These two sonatas were interleaved with four shorter pieces, two of which were composed for solo violin. The Prokofiev sonata was preceded by Grażyna Bacewicz’ “Polish Caprice,” while the Schumann sonata was follows by the “Tangy” movement from Korine Fujiwara’s Six Tasty Caprices. As might be guessed, the “tangy” taste was presented in the form of a tango. The program then concluded with duo performances of Amy Beach’s Opus 23 “Romance” and the “Romanza andaluza” by Pablo de Sarasate, the third of eight pieces he collected under the title Spanish Dances.

Taken as a whole, this was a straightforward bread-and-butter performance. Both musicians were attentive to the many details in the selections they performed. However, they tended to moderate their overall approach to expressiveness. To be fair, however, each of the compositions performed had enough expressiveness to speak for itself!