British Violin Sonatas Clare Howick & Simon Callaghan 

• William Walton (1902 - 1983): Violin Sonata:
• 1 Violin Sonata: I. Allegro tranquillo 12:38
• 2 Violin Sonata: II. Variazioni 14:18
• William Alwyn (1905 - 1985): Violin Sonatina:
• 3 Violin Sonatina: I. Allegro e grazioso 03:49
• 4 Violin Sonatina: II. Adagio 03:36
• 5 Violin Sonatina: III. Vivace 03:13
• Gordon Jacob (1895 - 1984):
• 6 Elegy for Violin & Piano 03:05
• 7 Caprice 02:25
• 8 Little Dancer 02:13
• Kenneth Leighton (1929 - 1988):
• 9 Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 4: I. Allegro molto appassionato 04:56
• 10 Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 4: II. Lento e liberamente 06:33
• 11 Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 4: III. Presto energico 06:21
• Alan Rawsthorne (1905 - 1971):
• 12 Valse caprice "Pierette" 03:27
• Lennox Berkeley (1903 - 1989):
• 13 Elegy, Op. 33 No. 2a 03:28
• 14 Toccata, Op. 33 No. 3 (Version for Violin & Piano) 01:52
• Total Runtime 01:11:54

Info for British Violin Sonatas

SOMM Recordings pays tribute to the remarkable flourishing of British Violin Sonatas in the 20th century with a collection of music for violin and piano by six key figures of the modern chamber music renaissance in Britain. Making her debut on SOMM, violinist Clare Howick’s championing of this repertoire prompted iclassical to declare ‘the record-buying public owe [her] a debt of gratitude’. She is accompanied by pianist Simon Callaghan. From the middle of the century, and commissioned for Yehudi Menuhin, William Walton’s Violin Sonata is unique in the composer’s oeuvre with its almost constant sense of nervous uncertainty. Composed the same year (1948), Kenneth Leighton’s youthful First Violin Sonata is the product, as Robert Matthew- Walker comments in his authoritative booklet notes, of “a deep-thinking musician of whom everything he was to write, from his earliest compositions onwards, is genuinely felt and unaffectedly original”. William Alwyn’s beautifully proportioned Sonatina (1933) receives only its second appearance on disc here. Composed the following year, Alan Rawsthorne’s Pierrette: Valse Caprice is best remembered from its quotation in the composer’s soundtrack for the 1947 film Uncle Silas. The contrasted Elegy and Toccata from Lennox Berkeley’s 1951 Op.33 reveal a master craftsman in miniature, while three pieces by Gordon Jacob – Little Dancer (1959), Caprice (1969) and Elegy (1972) – all make their first appearances on disc here.

Clare Howick, violin
Simon Callaghan, piano

No biography found.

Booklet for British Violin Sonatas