LEONIDAS KAVAKOS / IASON MARMARAS

Less popular than his Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, the Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord are nevertheless one of the first outstanding examples of the modern sonata, in the sense that the keyboard part is written out almost in its entirety, unlike the Baroque Sonatas where its interpretation was more or less subject to the harpsichordist’s imagination.  

It is interesting to note that this corpus was initially composed as sonatas with three independent parts, two melodic parts in dialogue with each other and a bass part. Occasionally, however, the harpsichord returns to a fully obstinate and inexorable movement, as in the first movement of the Fourth Sonata, where the harpsichord’s triplets simulate perpetual motion, curiously evoking an aesthetic close to Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrad. While the first five Sonatas follow the structure of the Sonata da Chiesa, with a four-movement construction alternating between slow and fast tempos, the final Sonata begins directly with a virtuoso Allegro reminiscent of the spirit of the Violin Concertos, placing the Sonata in the great school of Italian Baroque violin.