Yelena Grinberg, Piano

All-Mozart program:

Violin Sonata in D Major, K. 7 (1763-64)
Violin Sonata in A Major, K. 305 (1778)
Violin Sonata G Major, K. 9 (1763-64)
Violin Sonata in E minor, K. 304 (1778)
Violin Sonata in D Major, K. 306 (1778)

G-SHARP DUO
EMILIE-ANNE GENDRON, violin
YELENA GRINBERG, piano

From the organizer:

Dear Friends!

On Sunday, February 18th, 2018, at 5 p.m. Emilie and I warmly invite you to a special post-Valentine’s Day evening of MOZART A PARIS, in which we will explore Mozart’s Genius in his five “Parisian” Violin Sonatas. While Wolfgang was a young wunderkind – an “eternal Child,” as he is famously known – his family made several European journeys in which he and his sister, Nannerl, dazzled the European audiences with their prodigious gifts as keyboard virtuosos. A long concert tour spanning three and a half years, took him to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, Haag, again to Paris, and back home to Salzburg via Zurich and Munich. His first four Parisian sonatas for keyboard and violin, K. 6-9 – including his festive Sonata in D Major, K. 7 (1763-64) and his radiant Sonata in G Major, K. 9 (1763-64) – are considered among the earliest works published during Mozart’s grand tour of Paris when he was just 7 years old (!) and and were most likely influenced by the German keyboard player and composer, Johann Schobert, who was living and working in Paris when the Mozart family arrived there in November 1763. In contrast to these early keyboard-centric Sonatas, a later set of three Parisian violin sonatas (K. 304-306), composed in 1777-78 and published as Opus 1, present the two players as more equal partners in the musical discourse. Mozart’s elegiac, two-movement Sonata in E minor, K. 304 (1778) happens to be his only violin sonata cast in a minor tonality, no doubt reflecting the tragic circumstances of his mother’s death in Paris earlier that year. In stark contrast, Mozart’s sunny Sonata in A Major, K. 305 (1778) opens with an exuberant Allegro di molto featuring one of the happiest melodies in all of his violin sonatas, and is followed by a courtly Adagio grazioso theme-and-variations finale, filled with instrumental brilliance and operatic lyricism. Of all of Mozart’s Parisian Sonatas, his Sonata in D Major, K. 306 (1778), composed in Paris in the summer of 1778, stands out in its large-scale of three broadly conceived movements and its formidable virtuosity as “a great concert sonata.” (Alfred Einstein). The bold opening Allegro con spirito is followed by a sublime slow movement – Andante cantabile – in which the violin’s soaring melody bring to mind Mozart’s Violin Concertos composed in Salzburg some three years earlier, and concludes with the grand Allegretto finale which prefigures Mozart’s operas of the following decade and features a brilliant concerto-like cadenza for both players alike. Don’t miss this very special evening of Mozart a Paris!