Full Contents:

• Fauré: Sonata for Violin & Piano No.1 in A, Op. 13
  
  Walter Robert, piano
  recorded live on 17th February, 1966
  
  
• Slavonic Fantasy (Dvorak/Kreisler)
• Miniature Viennese March
• Berceuse Romantique
• Aucassin and Nicolette
• Song Without Words (Mendelssohn/Kreisler)
• La Gitana
• Menuet 'In the Style of Pugnani'
• Mazurka in A minor (Chopin/Kreisler)
• Serenade Espagnole (Chaminade/Kreisler)
• Rondino on a Theme of Beethoven
• Liebesleid
• Liebesfreud
  
  Charles H. Webb, piano
  Stereo studio recording, 14th September 1976

Josef Gingold plays works by Fauré and Kreisler

Fauré's Sonata in A for Violin and Piano is an early work, relatively conservative in style. It was composed in 1876 and first performed by the violinist Paul Viardot, to whom it was dedicated, at the Trocadero in 1878, with Fauré at the piano. In style, this is romantic music which looks back to Schumann and at times anticipates the equally romantic Franck Sonata, written a decade later. In his standard treatise, The Duo Repertoire, Abraham Loft finds that Fauré's music "while not especially difficult to play, is hard to interpret... It's largely a matter of physical and mental touch. If you do approach this music with gross abandon, if you try to inject into it an intensity false to its nature, it will crumble - 'splinter' has too brittle a connotation for this kind of writing - into nothingness. On the other hand, it is just as much a mistake to treat Fauré's music with excessive fastidiousness and precocity; there is in it something of robustness and sensuality, as well as delicacy. It can, as is often the case with the Requiem, be rendered with more other-worldliness than is good for it."

Fritz Kreisler left a lasting legacy not only through his recorded performances but also as a composer, arranger and editor who enriched the literature of the violin. Though some of his editions, such as Bach's violin solo pieces for which he provided piano accompaniments, have become out-moded long before the arrival of the historical performance movement of our time, others, notably the Tartini Devil's Trill Sonata which provides not only a new piano accompaniment but also an extremely difficult cadenza, have become integral parts of modern violin recitals. The cadenzas composed by Kreisler for the Beethoven and Brahms concertos (written when the violinist was 19) are used by more violinists than any other versions. His list of original compositions includes show pieces like Caprice Viennois, and the eternally popular mood pieces Liebesleid and Liebesfreud, based on Viennese folk tunes; there is also a String Quartet in A minor. As an arranger of other people's music, Kreisler was highly successful. He transcribed all sorts of music for the violin, often providing elaborate piano accompaniments (he was an accomplished pianist himself). His arrangements were widely used as concert display pieces not only by Kreisler but also by other violinists. After World War II, it became unfashionable to feature "arranged" music in concerts, and the once popular transcriptions appeared less frequently in concert programs (except in the Soviet Union, where violinists like Oistrakh and Kogan continued to play them); but the centenary of Kreisler' s birth in 1975 brought a revival of interest in his arrangements. Even today we find a digital recording of Kreisler's popular favorites played on the cello by Yo-Yo Ma!

Kreisler also tried to palm off on pre-World War I audiences as arrangements a number of compositions that he claimed he had unearthed and that he attributed to such classical composers as Pugnani, Friedemann Bach and Vivaldi. In 1935 Kreisler confided to an interviewer that he had played a hoax on experts for decades, having authored the "classical manuscripts" himself - an admission that did not exactly endear him to some critics, notably Ernest Newman, who took offense at being fooled by the violinist and attacked him in the London Times.

Excerpt from the sleevenotes, ©1989, Music and Arts

Find out more:   Fauré Violin Sonata in A: 2. Andante CD covers to print:   CD-writing cuesheet: [What's that?]

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