Description
The two Sonatas for violin and piano by Gabriel Fauré – Op. 13 and Op. 108 – together with Leone Sinigaglia’s Sonata for violin and piano Op. 44 trace a musical journey spanning the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. They reflect the passage from late Romanticism into the musical language of the early twentieth century, while still retaining the legacy of the great Romantic masters such as Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, and César Franck.
All this unfolds against the background of a historical landscape that, from the upheavals of the final decades of the nineteenth century – marked by imperial tensions, the Second Industrial Revolution, and growing social conflicts – passes through the optimism of the Belle Époque, only to become vulnerable to the winds of war with the outbreak of the First World War. The period would then see a brief recovery before once again descending into the anxieties that ultimately led to the Second World War and the tragedy of the Holocaust.
