Beach: Violin Sonata, Op.34; John Corigliano: Violin Sonata
Usha Kapoor (violin), Edward Leung (piano)
Resonus RES10321 60:51 mins
Amy Beach and John Corigliano were respectively 29 and 25 years old upon completing their Sonatas for Violin and Piano. In very different ways, both works combine taut succinctness with emotional expansiveness and a striking capacity for invention. Yet while Corigliano (b.1938) would go on to become one of the US’s most celebrated composers, Beach (1867-1944) is only now attaining wider recognition. A brilliant pianist, she was already forbidden by her husband to formally study composition or to give more than two recitals annually.
With full-bodied, Brahmsian writing for both instruments, it’s tempting to imagine Beach’s Sonata (1896) as a champing at the creative bit. However, Usha Kapoor and Edward Leung bring melodic sweetness rather than tempestuous drama to the fore. Contrasts are nonetheless legion and well made, as skipping themes give rise to dreamy, long-breathing phrases via deft changes of rhythmic and harmonic direction. The third movement Largo con dolore proves especially satisfying in its final, luminous arrival at chords reminiscent of Ravel – and the whole is poignantly set off by the ensuing, graceful performance of Beach’s earlier Romance for Violin and Piano.
Faster, more forthright recordings of Corigliano’s virtuoso Sonata (1964) also exist. Yet Kapoor and Leung persuade with a rendition that favours Stravinskian scamper over extrovert show, bringing an urbane Copland to mind at points of lopsided polytonality in the opening and closing Allegros. The highlight of the disc is surely the inner movements, the Andantino finding unexpected tenderness and the Lento’s cadenza a questioning which finds lovely response in the piano’s ghostly rejoining.