Violin Sonata No. 3 (Enescu)

The Sonata No. 3 in A minor "dans le caractère populaire roumain" (in Romanian Folk Style) for violin and piano, Op. 25, is a chamber music composition written in 1926 by the Romanian composer George Enescu. The score, published in 1933, is dedicated to the memory of the violinist Franz Kneisel. It is one of the composer's most popular and at the same time most critically respected works.
History.
The Third Violin Sonata was written in a span of about four months in 1926 at a time when Enescu was also occupied with the late stages of work on the opera "Œdipe". The sonata was first performed in Oradea, in January 1927 by the composer and the pianist Nicolae Caravia, who repeated it shortly afterward in Bucharest. Enescu and Caravia also gave the Paris premiere in March 1927, in the Salle Gaveau. A particularly notable early performance took place in Paris in June 1930, when the composer was partnered by Alfred Cortot. Enescu's pupil Yehudi Menuhin made a recording in 1936 with his sister Hephzibah Menuhin on piano, and the composer himself recorded the work twice as a violinist, in 1943 with Dinu Lipatti and again a few years later with Céliny Chaillez-Richez. A performance took place in May 1946 with Yehudi Menuhin playing the violin part, accompanied on the piano by the composer.
The sonata prompted enthusiasm immediately at the time of its premiere, and has ever since been the composition by Enescu that has received the greatest amount of attention in the musicological and critical literature, with the possible exception of his opera, "Œdipe". It has also become the most popular of Enescu's works after the two Romanian Rhapsodies.
Analysis.
Without ever quoting actual folk tunes, the material possesses the authenticity of a sort of "super folklore". The violin is cast in the role of a gypsy fiddle, and the writing for the piano imitates the cimbalom and kobza.
The sonata is divided into three movements:
The first movement is in a loose sonata-allegro form, beginning with a suave and nostalgic first thematic group presented in continuous and supple lines in the piano and more hesitantly in the violin. When this material returns in the recapitulation it will be transformed into a kind of "horă bătrînească" (old men's dance). The second thematic group brings a contrasting atmosphere of sobriety and intensified differentiation of colour, a characteristic that will return for further development in the second movement. The development is confined almost entirely to material from the first thematic group, but after the recapitulation there is an extended coda that brings together motivic fragments from both groups. The transformation of the material from the lyrical, songlike style of the exposition and development into the persistent dance rhythms of the recapitulation bestows upon the movement the overall impression of a two-part rhapsody in the traditional "lassú–friss" pattern.
The second movement can be described as a song form in three parts: a long opening section filled with introspection and poetic facets, where the violin plays almost entirely in harmonics, followed by a contrasting central section in folk style, and a return of the opening material with a concluding, gentle coda.
The finale is in rondo form using a refrain whose melody is reminiscent of a bear dance from northern Moldavia. Despite the sectional form, the thematic material is subjected to continuous variation—a process made particularly clear in the C section, which is structured as a miniature theme and variations. This procedure results in an effect described as Enescu's "rhapsodic style".