1. Allegro vivo
2. Intermède: Fantasque et léger
3. Très animé

In 1914 Debussy declared his intention of writing six sonatas for various instruments in homage to the French Baroque tradition. However, his deteriorating health meant that he was only able to complete three: the Cello Sonata and the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp (both 1915) and the Sonata for Violin and Piano (1917). Debussy’s signature on each Sonata – ‘Claude Debussy, musicien français’ – indicates his deepening patriotism and identification with the French musical tradition as World War I continued.

Although Debussy wrote the Sonata for Violin while suffering from terminal bowel cancer and described it laconically as ‘an example of what may be produced by a sick man in time of war’, there is no evidence of illness or depression in its constantly inventive, mercurial music. The dreamy opening 'Allegro vivo' features quicksilver changes of mood, and rhapsodic, almost improvisatory writing for the violin that may recall the composer’s delight in hearing a Hungarian gypsy violinist perform in Budapest in 1910. The delicately textured 'Intermède' alternates a witty, fleet-footed dialogue between piano and violin with passages of languid lyricism. A brief recollection of the piece's opening leads into the finale: a rapid dance whose melody Debussy described as ‘like a snake biting its own tail’, with a contrasting central episode featuring sensual Hispanic rhythms. The flamboyant final section closes the Sonata in a mood of optimistic exuberance.

The Sonata for Violin was Debussy’s last composition. He accompanied violinist Gaston Poulet in its premiere on 5 May 1917 at a benefit concert for French soldiers. This proved to be his last public appearance as a performer. He died just over ten months later, on 25 March 1918.

^{Note by Kate Hopkins}

Claude Debussy
^1862–1918

Despite an insecure family background (his father was imprisoned as a revolutionary in 1871), Debussy took piano lessons and was accepted as a pupil of the Paris Conservatoire in 1872, but failed to make the grade as a concert pianist. The gifted musician directed his talents towards composition, eventually winning the coveted Prix de Rome in 1884 and spending two years in Italy. During the 1890s he lived in poverty with his mistress Gabrielle Dupont, eventually marrying the dressmaker Rosalie (Lily) Texier in 1899. 

His Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, although regarded as a revolutionary work at the time of its premiere in December 1894, soon found favour with concert-goers and the habitually conservative French press. Late in the summer of the previous year he had begun work on the only opera he completed, Pelléas et Mélisande, which was inspired by Mæterlinck’s play. It was an immediate success after its first production in April 1902. 

In 1904 he met Emma Bardac, the former wife of a successful financier, and moved into an apartment with her; his wife, Lily Texier, attempted suicide following their separation. Debussy and Emma had a daughter and were subsequently married in January 1908. The composer’s troubled domestic life did not affect the quality of his work, with such magnificent scores as La mer for large orchestra and the first set of Images for piano produced during this period. 

Debussy’s ballet Jeux was first performed by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in May 1913, a fortnight before the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Although suffering from cancer, he managed to complete the first three of a projected set of six instrumental sonatas. He died at his Paris home and was buried at Passy cemetery. 

_{Composer profile by Andrew Stewart}

Arvo Pärt wrote Spiegel im Spiegel in 1978 shortly before his emigration from Estonia. It was commissioned by the Russian violinist Vladimir Spivakov, who premiered it the same year in Moscow with the pianist Boris Bekhterev. The title means ‘Mirror in the Mirror’.

The composition consists of a violin melody in which each ascending phrase is mirrored by a descending one, all underpinned by a three-note piano accompaniment. The melody initially consists of two notes and expands by a note with each ensuing pair of phrases. The piano part, which Pärt envisages as following the violin like ‘a guardian angel’, features bell-like effects above and below the melody line. This tintinnabulation, coupled with the slowly unfolding melody, creates an atmosphere of great calm.

Spiegel im Spiegel is one of Arvo Pärt’s most popular compositions, and has featured widely in film, television and ballet.

^{Note by Kate Hopkins}

Arvo Pärt
^1874–1951

Arvo Pärt was born in Paide, Estonia on 11 September 1935. He started his formal musical education in 1954 at the Tallinn Music Middle School and eventually enrolled in the Tallinn Conservatory in 1957. Pärt’s earliest compositional efforts were in a neo-Classical style, typified by two early piano works: Two Sonatinas (1958) and Partita (1959). Over the course of the next decade his compositional language underwent a dramatic evolution as he began to work with avant-garde techniques. 

Nekrolog (1963) was the first Estonian work to adopt the 12-tone method, and brought Pärt to prominence in the west. This period of avant-garde experimentalism culminated with the complex ‘soundcollage’ Credo (1968), which juxtaposes Pärt’s then harsh, modernist musical language with quotes from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. 

In the wake of the success of Credo, Pärt underwent an extended creative crisis. He had lost faith in the avant-garde aesthetic and in his own words felt that he had to ‘learn to walk all over again’. Between 1968 and 1976 he all but withdrew from composing, publishing only a single work, the transitional Symphony No 3 (1971). He emerged from this creative silence with the pivotal piano work Für Alina (1976), constructed using a self-invented technique: ‘tintinnabulation’. 

In contrast to the complexity he had striven for in his early career, Pärt now valued clarity and economy above all else. Many of Pärt’s most popular works are composed in this pared-back style including Cantus (1977), Spiegel im Spiegel (1978) and Symphony No 4 (2008). His music is often associated with the minimalist movement, though his focus on religious subject-matter and strongly held Christian faith prompted usage of the term ‘holy-minimalism’. 

_{Composer profile by Benjamin Picard}

1. Allegretto ben moderato
2. Allegro
3. Ben moderato: Recitativo-Fantasia
4. Allegretto poco mosso

On 26 September 1886, his wedding day, the great violinist, Eugene Ysaÿe, dressed in his best bib and tucker, received a gift from his friend César Franck, a shiny new (and, as it turned out, Franck’s only) Violin Sonata. Presumably with the blessings of his new wife, he gave the premiere to delighted guests that very evening, with a borrowed violin and the pianist Marie Léontine Bordes-Pène on the hotel piano. The work quickly became popular after its ‘proper’ premiere that also was not without drama: due to the venue’s red tape it had to be concluded in the gloom, the performers playing by heart, no mean feat in itself but especially so as the piano part is noted for being particularly fiendish.

Franck intended the first movement to be fairly slow but Ysaÿe took it at quite a lick. The composer decided that Ysaÿe had the right idea and changed it to ‘Allegretto’. In the stormy second movement, violin and piano pass both the melody and accompaniment from one to the other. As its title implies, the 'Recitativo-Fantasia' is in two parts, opening with a dramatic Wagnerian chord while the Fantasia is in a reflective mood. The final movement is perhaps the most recognised, its lyrical theme echoed in canon form and, like Bartók’s Second Sonata, makes good use of themes from throughout the work.

^{Note by Sarah Breeden}

César Franck
^1822–90

César-Auguste Franck was born in Liège, Belgium on 10 December 1822. From an early age he displayed a great artistic aptitude, showing promise as both a pianist and composer. His father had lofty aspirations for his talented son, expecting him to find fame and fortune as a virtuoso pianist/composer. At his behest, Franck entered the Liège Conservatoire at the age of eight. 

In 1834, Franck’s father– determined to profit from his son’s talents – sent the young prodigy to Paris to study privately with Anton Reicha. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1838 where within a year he had won the Grand Prix d’Honneur, one of the institution's most prestigious awards. In 1842 his father withdrew him from the Conservatoire before he could complete his studies to focus on building his reputation as a virtuoso. His concerts were initially well received, but a growing number of scornful reviews greatly diminished Franck’s confidence. 

Franck’s marriage to the actress Félicité Saillot in 1848 marked a turning point in his life and career. Now able to break from the fierce exploitation of his father he turned to a simpler way of life. Throughout the 1850s and 60s he held a series of positions as organist and choirmaster before becoming professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire in 1872 where his unorthodox approach brought him praise and disdain in equal measure. 

Franck’s reputation as the pre-eminent French composer rests almost entirely on a string of works he completed in the last decade of his life, chief amongst these are the Sonata for Violin and Piano (1886) and the Symphony in D minor (1888). These late works display an unprecedented sense of freedom, both structural and harmonic, setting the foundations for the musical language of a new generation of French composers including Ravel and Debussy. 

_{Composer profile by Benjamin Picard}