Lost American Violin Sonatas, Volume One
This anthology of unknown American violin sonatas – the first of a series – reveals music of astonishing craftsmanship and energy. All three composers – Rossetter Gleason Cole, Henry Holden Huss and Henry Schoenefeld, born less than ten years apart – went to Germany to study before returning to enrich American musical life at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The sheer confidence of their writing, for both violin and piano, in these sonatas, in a bold Brahmsian style, indicates how much more fine music still has to be discovered, in the output of these three men and from their ‘lost generation’ of American composers more generally.
Solomia Soroka, violin
Arthur Greene, piano
Phillip Silver, piano
Rossetter Gleason Cole
Sonata for Violin and Piano in D Major, Op. 8 (publ. 1917) (29:46)
- I. Allegro moderato (8:56)
- II. Scherzo. Presto – Andante – Tempo I (6:29)
- III. Adagio – (6:28)
- IV. Allegro con moto (7:53)
Henry Holden Huss
Violin Sonata, Op. 19 (c. 1894) (21:21)
- I. Allegro con moto (9:07)
- II. Adagio sostenuto (5:27)
- III. Allegro molto (6:47)
Henry Schoenefeld
Sonata in G Minor, quasi Fantasia, Op. 53 (publ. 1903) (25:24)
- I. Allegro con spirito e energico (12:00)
- II. Romanze. Andante cantabile e espressivo – Allegro moderato e tranquillo – Andante (7:12)
- III. Rondo. Vivace (7:12)
First Recordings
Infodad :
‘A fascinating first-in-a-planned-series Toccata Next recording that offers world premières of three violin sonatas by entirely obscure American composers provides a fascinating entry point to the world of American classical music at a time when it was struggling to find its voice and move beyond its models. […] All have a Brahmsian glow, a warmth and elegance of line that make them very pleasant to hear[…]. All these works are worthwhile for the light they shed on a particular period in American classical music-making, and all are notable for showing the extent to which serious American composers of this time period were beholden to the German Romantic compositional and performance traditions.’
—Infodad