HATTY HAYNES & CHARLIE WOOF-BYRNE
3pm Saturday 22 March 2025
Conoco Room
About the Music
Franz Schubert: Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 137, No. 3, D. 408
The songs of Franz Schubert (1797-1828) remain among his most popular and best-known compositions. One can think of such works as ‘Serenade’, ‘Ave Maria’ and ‘Die Erlkönig’ (The Elf-King) in this regard. Schubert infused the same focus on melodic primacy and atmospheric underpinning that characterise his songs into everything he wrote, including the enchanting sonata that opens this afternoon’s programme. Written in 1816 when Schubert was just 19, its four-movement design reveals indebtedness to composers of the previous generation, especially Mozart. The first movement begins with the violin and piano playing in unison, a promise of the unfolding lyricism that will fill the entire movement. A sense of gentleness pervades the second movement, while the third movement, marked ‘Menuetto’, depicts the elegance of a formal ballroom. Its contrasting middle section offers a close up of two dancers as they glide across the floor. The final movement features first a wistful theme and then a jovial dance-like tune, both of which evoke the spirit of Gemütlichkeit, that particularly Viennese quality of comfortable familiarity.
Clara Schumann: Three Romances, Op. 22
One of the most significant pianists of the nineteenth century, Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896) enjoyed an astonishingly long performing career of 61 years. She often performed the works of her husband, Robert Schumann, becoming, after his death in 1856, an even more ardent champion of his music. Clara was also a gifted composer in her own right, and it is almost certain that she contributed at least in part to many of her husband’s compositions. Among her most frequently performed works are the Three Romances, written in 1853 and dedicated to Joseph Joachim, a brilliant violinist who was friends with not only Clara and Robert but also Johannes Brahms. Character pieces constituted a significant part of concert repertory in the nineteenth century. These short works were meant to convey a particular mood, or character, and the tenderness inherent in the romance made it an especially favoured genre for Clara. Clara and Joachim included her Romances on their concert tours and once played them for King George V of Hanover, who called them a ‘marvellous, heavenly pleasure’. All three exude a sense of refinement that is created through the close musical interplay between the violin and the piano. The pathos of the first Romance leads to suppleness in the second and expansiveness in the third.
Lili Boulanger: Deux morceaux (Two pieces)
A child prodigy on several instruments, Lili Boulanger’s (1893-1918) compositional output ranged from large-scale orchestral works to intimate chamber music. In 1913, she became the first woman to win the prestigious Prix de Rome from the Paris Conservatory. She was only 19 at the time, the same age as Schubert when he wrote the sonata that opens this afternoon’s programme. Boulanger’s music displays the grace and sophistication characteristic of French music in the early years of the twentieth century, as we’ll hear today in her Deux morceaux. ‘Nocturne’, written in 1911, invokes an ethereal spaciousness through its opening series of quasi-melodic octaves in the piano over which rhapsodic melodies in both the violin and the piano appear. ‘Cortège’, from 1914, depicts the sort of rollicking music one might imagine hearing while strolling along a vibrant Parisian boulevard. Some may recognise the surname Boulanger, for Lili’s older sister, Nadia (1887-1979), was a noted conductor and one of the most important composition teachers of the twentieth century.
Brahms: Sonata for Piano and Violin No. 2, Op. 100
During the summer of 1886, Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was enjoying time away from the hustle and bustle of Vienna in the peaceful town of Thun in Switzerland. Brahms used his summers to compose, and this particular season was especially productive, for in addition to the Second Sonata for Piano and Violin, he wrote the Second Cello Sonata, Op. 99, the Third Piano Trio, Op. 101 and Five Songs, Op. 105.
The sonata we’ll hear this afternoon radiates an almost pastoral mood filled with lyricism and repose. Brahms’s friend Elisabet von Herzogenberg called it ‘a caress’. One theme in the first movement closely resembles that of the first of the Five Songs written during that same bucolic summer, ‘Wie Melodien zieht es mir’ (Like melodies it moves, gently through my mind). One could almost imagine the following words of the song (by Klaus Groth) as inspiring the sonata:
Like melodies it moves,
Gently through my mind;
It blossoms like spring flowers
And wafts away like fragrance.
The first movement begins with the piano introducing a glowing melody and the violin providing commentary. The instruments then exchange roles, Brahms asserting that the two instruments will truly be equal partners throughout the sonata. Soaring melodies and rich textures fill the movement, along with plenty of Brahms’s characteristic heroic triplets (where three notes appear in the space normally reserved for two) and offer a sense of rising above the ordinary. The second movement alternates between lyrical sections filled with Viennese charm and faster ones that are more folk-like and rustic in nature. Brahms also explores the sonorous possibilities of the violin and the piano by having the violin play a lyrical melody in its upper range over grounding in the lower register of the piano. The third movement highlights the rich, lower tones of the violin. When combined with the almost omnipresent intertwining dialogue between the two instruments, a reflective glow saturates the movement, the aural equivalent of a summer sunset. The sonata’s first performance took place on 2 December 1886 in Vienna with Brahms’s dear friend and frequent musical partner Joseph Hellmesberger as violinist and Brahms as pianist.
Claude Debussy: Sonata for Violin and Piano
The Great War had an undeniable impact on every composer living at the time. As Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was seeing the world around him becoming irrevocably changed, he embarked on a new project: a series of six sonatas for various instruments. His idea was to look back to the eighteenth-century idea of a sonata – a piece to be played (as opposed to a cantata, a piece to be sung) – and to pay homage to the esteemed legacy of French instrumental music. He was very specific in this regard. He even signed his manuscript ‘Claude Debussy, musician français’. Debussy only completed three of his projected set of six sonatas, the third of which we’ll hear this afternoon. Composed in 1917, the Sonata for Violin and Piano was Debussy’s last major composition. Its premiere on 5 May 1917 featured Gaston Poulet on violin and Debussy himself on piano in what was to be his last public performance.
Debussy’s Sonata is in many ways akin to the impressionist work of artists such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro through its variety of colours and diffusions of light (through timbre) and clarity (through the choice of pitches). Refractions and reflections of light, so characteristic of impressionism, here play out as musical ideas, heard first on the violin, that are mirrored in a pool of rippling piano filigree. The suppleness of such melodic treatment appears in all three movements, along with an extraordinary array of special effects. These include pizzicato (plucked) passages, playing over the fingerboard and various types of harmonics (where the string is merely touched and not pressed down). The sonata’s virtuoso flourishes and captivating sounds make it a fitting finale to our celebratory concert.
-Notes by William Everett
About the Performers
Hatty Haynes, violin, enjoys a varied musical life as a recitalist, chamber musician and orchestral player. She is known for her dynamic performances on both modern and historic instruments. Hatty is co-leader of the London Mozart Players and regularly appears with such ensembles as La Serenissima, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Jess Gillam Ensemble, Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. As a chamber musician, she is a member of the Trio Cordiera, which often performs on historic instruments.
Charlie Woof-Byrne, piano, is an acclaimed chamber musician and composer based in London who frequently performs with both instrumentalists and singers. He has appeared at many prestigious UK venues, including St Martin-in-the-Fields, The Purcell Room, St Georges’ Bristol and St James’ Piccadilly. As a post-graduate student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he studied with the highly regarded pianist Julius Drake. Charlie gratefully acknowledges Help Musicians UK and the Countess of Munster Musical Trust for their support.
About the Violin
On today’s concert, Hatty will be playing ‘The Ludensian Violin’, a fine German-made instrument dating from about 1890 previously owned by local resident and best-selling crime novelist Nick Louth. The LDCS expresses its sincere gratitude to Nick for donating the violin to the Society. With the exception of Schubert, all the composers whose music we will enjoy today were alive when the instrument was still in its youth. The instrument was recently restored by Laurentius Huige of Bridge Street Violins in Billinghay (https://bridgestreetviolins.com/).
