Word: sonata
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Last evening's program by a fine violist, Paul Doktor, and a muddy pianist, Yaltah Menuhin (fille), offered Brahma, Debussy, and Kabalevsky, all for the price of Hindemith. Hindemith's Sonata No. 1 for viola (1920) is what is known in scholarly circles as a review of the literature. It starts with annotated Schubert and proceeds to Brahms, citing from impressionistic Debussy as needed. An extensive quote of the born motive in Brahms' Fourth Symphony provides the theme for a set of variations, wherein Hindemith invokes the style of Kabalevsky's 24 Easy Pieces for Children; and paraphrases...
...pieces, the first and the last, saved the program. One of them, Schubert's Sonata Per Arpeggione (1824), actually transcribes for viola a work for an extinct instrument. A Viennese violin maker invented the six-stringed arpeggione in 1823 and for some reason Schubert wrote a masterpiece for it. Transcribed, the sonata is one of the mainstays of the viola repertoire. And Doktor, though he chose a questionable tempo to begin with, modulated it with good, sensitive rubatos where needed. Perhaps because he was just not warmed up, some of the technical display in the later movements came out more...
...concluding Sonata No. II in E flat major (Op. 120, No. II) by Brahms got the finest performance of the evening, and nearly deserved it. Though Doktor occasionally had problems with undesirable harmonics, in the lower register he coaxed forth the best rich tone of the viola. Under his consistently thoughtful phrasing, the music breathed; it ranged vigorously over a continuum of delicacy and strength. Beneath it all, the piano dully bungled along: too much pedal again, sloppy arpeggios, no subtlety in dynamics. But Brahms surmounted Miss Menuhin's limitations...
...repertoire of viola music is in a sad state; witness the fact that the two best pieces on the program were transcriptions (Brahms originally wrote his sonata for clarinet). Doktor demonstrated, nicely the unique tonal powers of the viola: all that lack now are more good opportunities to exploit them...
...three. But times have changed. Last week, in Manhattan's Carnegie Hall, one of the world's great violinists walked to the center of the stage, took measure of the audience for a long, silent minute, nodded to his accompanist and swept into Beethoven's Sonata in C Minor with all the flamboyance of a stockbroker stepping...