Twenty-First Century Sonatas for Viola and Piano

Editor's Note:

The four sonatas in this collection–all penned after the turn of the millennium–are linked by a particular richness of sound, a particular voluptuousness of melodic line, that flourishes when unleashed on the sonority of the viola. In the four substantial movements of the Goossen, this manifests in long phrases with a loose approach to meter; time stretches and shifts to enhance musical tension (though generally with a single underlying pulse). Boykan takes a different approach: the twists of the viola’s song are interrupted, spattered, and reconstructed over three movements (an Arioso, Scherzo, and Prayer) in a strange, unearthly conversation with the piano. In the Galindo, the piano’s swirls and neo-Impressionist patterns allow the viola to pull and strain with harmonic tension; lush and aggressive in turn, with much of the material having a chance to speak through both instruments across the four movements.

Read’s two-movement sonata, with an optional extended finale, is especially suited as a showpiece; the first movement trans-forms from fast to slow, and the second from fast to faster.All four sonatas are generally late intermediate to professional in difficulty; this comes from both the technical demands (roughly equivalent to professional repertoire of the late Romantic period) and the careful intonation required of music that explores outflung harmonies and pitch patterns.