Robert Schumann composed the Violin Sonata in A minor, Op 105 between 12 and 16 September. After the first, private, performance at the Schumanns’ Düsseldorf home, his wife, Clara, was delighted with the first two movements but had reservations about the finale: ‘Only the third movement, rather less graceful and more intractable, didn’t go so well.
Only when Violinist Joseph Joachim played the Sonata while visiting the Schumanns in September 1853 that the composer was fully satisfied, writing that ‘it struck the inmost strings of the heart’.
Uniquely among Schumann’s major chamber works, the A minor Violin Sonata is in three rather than four movements, with the central Allegretto combining the functions of slow movement and scherzo.
The first movement bears the typically Schumannesque heading Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck(‘With passionate expression’), though its passion is smouldering rather than explosive, relieved by moments of wistful delicacy in the second group of themes.
Here is Clara-Jumi Kang to perform this music for you:
