Violin Sonata No. 2

Violin Sonata No. 2

While almost every music critic in the biz as well as the folks who adjudicate the Grammy Awards were overjoyed about the CD release of Bill Bolcom’s massive Songs of Innocence and of Experience, I’m even more thrilled to see his four sonatas for violin and piano finally made available on a single, complete, and… Read more »

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NewMusicBox Staff

While almost every music critic in the biz as well as the folks who adjudicate the Grammy Awards were overjoyed about the CD release of Bill Bolcom’s massive Songs of Innocence and of Experience, I’m even more thrilled to see his four sonatas for violin and piano finally made available on a single, complete, and authoritative recording. The four works, which span most of the second half of the 20th century (1956 to 1994, to be precise), offer all of Bolcom’s polystylistic gambits, but the consistency of the timbral combination of violin and piano makes the inter-relativity of his disparate influences all the more seamless. Perhaps singling out a snippet from just one movement here doesn’t demonstrate how effective these juxtapositions are in an audibly convincing way, but nevertheless “In Memory of Joe Venuti,” which effortlessly morphs from an atonal figuration to a salsa charanga and back without skipping a beat, should give you some idea.

–FJO