Schedule for Sergei Khachatryan recital (violin) 2022

Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
Violin soloist: Sergey Khachatryan
Composer: Ludwig Van Beethoven

Orchestra: Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra

The programme includes:
Johann Sebastian Bach
Sonata for solo violin No. 1 in G Minor
Partita for solo violin No. 2 in D Minor
Ludwig van Beethoven
Sonata for violin and piano No. 9 in F Major, op. 47, (Kreutzer)

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata for Violin and Piano No 9 in A Major, Op. 47, entered history under the title of the “Kreutzer Sonata”, in as much as the composer dedicated it to French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, of whose performing and human traits he had an extremely high opinion. The addressee, however, had no opinion whatever of Beethoven’s music, and never performed it once. The Sonata’s premiere in 1803 was exotic in nature: the piano part was performed by the composer himself and the violin by the then renowned virtuoso mulatto Bridgetower, the son of a Negro who claimed to be an Abyssinian prince.
Beethoven gave the work the sub-heading “in a very concert style” – he would have been fully justified in calling it “in symphonic style”, as the grandiose first section creates the impression of the movement of a symphony, turning the duo of performers into a breathtaking “one-on-one”, demanding all the resources of both instruments. The second part – an Andante with variations – is again a competition, albeit of an entirely different nature: the violin and the piano contend for supremacy over one another in subtlety and brilliance of drawing, in a light, soaring movement weaving together the delicate musical fabric. The finale of the Sonata is an impetuous tarantella, where there reigns a joyful mood, the spirit of dance and humour.
The popularity of the Kreutzer Sonata was aided by Tolstoy’s tale of the same name; here the writer calls the Andante “beautiful, though ordinary, not new”, the variations “vulgar” and the finale “utterly weak”. However, of the first section he wrote that “These things can be played only in famous, important and significant circumstances and only at a time when renowned, famous steps must be taken, which correspond to this music.” Later Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy changed his unflattering opinion of the second and third parts. From pianist Goldenweiser’s Talks with Tolstoy we know how the author lost his head on hearing the Sonata some years later after publication of his tale. Seemingly, he himself could hardly believe in that which he had once ascribed to this music.

Nadezhda Kulygina

Johann Sebastian Bach’s musical education began when he learnt the violin under his father’s tuition. And although in years to come the young Bach was to spend all of his time studying the organ, composition and choral singing, he had learned the violin so well that at the age of eighteen he had taken the post of violinist in the cappella of the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar. The instrument’s expressive, acoustic and technical possibilities are used so fully and brilliantly in the composer’s works that it can only be explained by his professional proficiency on the instrument.
The majority of Bach’s works for violin were written in his Kцthen (1717–1723). The Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, completed in 1720, stand apart in the history of music. It is impossible to compare them with anything else. Not because “at times the relatively natural possibilities of the instrument are ignored in them, but because they frequently demand that the violinist be able to resolve extremely complex technical problems” (Leopold Auer); and not because the form of the violin solo sonatas and suites (partite in Italian) allows the instrument to display in full all of its expressive qualities... This music has such philosophical depths, such profound wisdom and even theology that the problem of interpreting it has engaged the minds of performers and music historians for over one hundred years now.

Svetlana Nikitina