I was not familiar with this violin sonata, but upon listening to it, I decided to post it. Other than it being one of Mozart’s famous works, I was delighted by the dialogue between the violinist and the pianist. This type of interplay is very, very hard to achieve and to maintain. Both Szigeti and Howszowski have an enormous range of tonal colors at their disposal. I think that you will find their dialogue enchanting.
Mozart’s Violin Sonata K. 380, composed in E-flat major, is considered a prime example of his mature violin sonata style, showcasing a beautiful balance between the violin and piano parts with a particularly charming and elegant character, featuring lively, virtuosic passages in the outer movements and a serene, melodic Andante movement that often captures listeners’ attention with its expressive quality; it’s often praised for its melodic beauty, technical brilliance, and the seamless interaction between the two instruments.
Key points to mention about K. 380:
Musical character:
Bright, cheerful, with moments of thoughtful introspection, particularly in the slower middle movement.
Technical aspects:
Features intricate violin lines with demanding passages for both piano and violin, showcasing Mozart’s mastery of writing for both instruments.
Structure:
Follows the typical sonata form with an energetic opening Allegro, a contrasting slower Andante, and a lively concluding movement.
Importance in Mozart’s oeuvre:
Considered one of his most accomplished violin sonatas, demonstrating a high level of musical maturity and compositional skill.
1st Movmt: Allegro Vivace
2nd Movmt: Andante con moto
3rd Movmnnt: Rondo Allegro
Miecysław Horszowki
June 23, 1892 – May 22, 1993
I discovered Horszowski relatively late in my life. I have a friend who had taught at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and she knew students of Horszowski. I heard him play in a church on Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. He wasn’t very well known to the general public. He was more a pianist’s pianist, but he had a large following. I heard him again at his farewell recital at Carnegie Hall in 1989, when he was 97 and had only tunnel vision. The recital was sold out and packed with musicians. By that time, Horszowski had become my favorite pianist, and he still is. He was a student of Leschetizky. This may not mean anything to some of you, but you should make it your point to look up Leschetizky, who was in a musical lineage from Beethoven.
Horszowski Early life
Horszowski was born in Lwów (Lemberg), Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine) and was initially taught by his mother, a pupil of Karol Mikuli (himself a pupil of Frédéric Chopin). He became a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna at the age of seven.
In 1901 he gave a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in Warsaw and soon after toured Europe and the Americas as a child prodigy. In 1905 the young Horszowski played for Gabriel Fauré and met Camille Saint-Saëns in Nice. In 1911 Horszowski put his performing career on hold in order to devote himself to literature, philosophy and art history in Paris.
While Horszowski’s family was of Jewish origin (which made him a fugitive from Europe in the 1930s), he was himself an early convert to Roman Catholicism and was very devout.
Horszowski, who was barely five feet tall, had rather small hands. He avoided much of the virtuoso repertoire. Horszowski’s performances were known for their natural, unforced quality, balancing intellect and emotion. He was frequently praised for his tonal quality, as was common for pupils of Leschetizky.
Having returned to the concert stage with the encouragement of Pablo Casals, he settled in Milan after the First World War, remaining there until he emigrated to the United States during World War II. Following the war, Horszowski frequently gave recitals with artists such as Casals, Alexander Schneider, Joseph Szigeti and the Budapest Quartet. He often appeared at the Prades Festival and the Marlboro Festival.
From 1940 Horszowski lived in the United States, first in New York City and later in Philadelphia. Horszowski performed with the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Toscanini, with whom he was friends, in 1943 and 1953.
Horszowski twice performed at the White House: with Casals and Schneider in 1961 for President Kennedy and a solo performance in 1979 for President Carter.
Horszowski Later life and death
Horszowski’s final performance took place in Philadelphia in October 1991. He died in that city a month before his 101st birthday. He gave his final lesson a week before his death.
Joseph Szigeti
September 5, 1892 – February 19, 1973
Joseph Szigeti was an unusual superstar. The Hungarian violinist, born in 1892, wasn’t blessed with a glamorous sound or a thrilling vibrato. He didn’t have Kreisler’s charm, Heifetz’s electricity, or Elman’s emotiveness. He did possess elite violinistic and musical qualities: impeccable intonation, virtuoso facility, a varied vocabulary of characterful bow strokes, and a high degree of elegance. But what most shaped Szigeti’s career were more human characteristics: integrity, curiosity, and sheer dedication to the hard work of practicing.
Szigeti’s integrity impelled him to limit himself to music he found meaningful, to the exclusion of what might be popular. Though he came of age in an era when recital programs were expected to include concertos and plentiful musical bonbons, and encountered presenters who told him things like, “your Krewtser sonata bores the pants off my audiences,” Szigeti sold audiences and presenters alike on sonatas and unaccompanied Bach, meanwhile giving serious thought to the makeup and order of every program.
His curiosity led him to seek out music of living composers, which he’d practice for years in order to achieve mastery. He recorded Bartók and Stravinsky with the composers at the piano, and popularized music his colleagues considered too thorny to attempt, especially Prokofiev’s First Concerto. He received the dedication for Bartók’s First Rhapsody and, with Benny Goodman, co-commissioned Bartók’s Contrasts. His playing of Bach’s unaccompanied G minor Sonata inspired Ysaÿe to compose his own Solo Sonata No. 1 in G Minor. He also premiered concerti by Casella, Frank Martin, and Bloch, who wrote: “Modern composers realize that when Szigeti plays their music, their inmost fancy, their slightest intentions become fully realized, and their music is not exploited for the glorification of the artist and his technique, but that artist and technique become the humble servant of the music.”
According to pedagogue Carl Flesch, Szigeti was “extraordinarily lovable as a human being,” and “adroit both culturally and socially.” But he acquired his culture the hard way. Raised in the Carpathian Mountains among a clan of fiddle-playing uncles, at eleven Szigeti became a student of Jenö Hubay, in whose class, he would later write, there existed “an atmosphere of such puerile technical rivalry, we were… completely absorbed by the externals of our craft.” Szigeti attributed this situation not to Hubay, but “above all, to our parents who generated such unhealthy impatience…” This impatience led Szigeti to launch a solo career at just thirteen.
Out in the wider world, hearing Ysaÿe, Kreisler, Elman—players with exciting new approaches to sound and interpretation—he realized his own playing was old-fashioned and provincial. He found musical mentors, especially the pianist Ferrucio Busoni, with whom he studied Bach’s Chaconne. And he worked to modernize his tone, which in maturity was beautifully noble, if prone to occasional rasping and scratching from excessive proximity to or distance from the bridge. Szigeti also suffered from a quite slow vibrato. But for most listeners, these flaws didn’t distract from his compelling musicality. For several decades mid-century, Szigeti was among the best-compensated and most-requested soloists, excelling in a distinct repertoire of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, various works of Hungariana, and music of living composers—as attested to by his recorded legacy.