violin Sonata
In memory of my dear Father, Stephen D. Leshnoff
Duration ca. 20' (2022)
violin, piano
View Score
Written for, and lovingly dedicated to, Gil Shaham and Robert Spano.
World Premiere August 9, 2023 at the Aspen Music Festival; Violinist Gil Shaham and pianist Robert Spano.
“Heart-on-sleeve, unabashedly-melodic, lushly-expressive piece....Alternately melancholy and wistful.”
program note
Jonathan Leshnoff, Gil Shaham and Robert Spano have a long musical friendship—Shaham premiered his Yiddish Dance Suite in 2011 and Chamber Concerto in 2015, and Spano conducted the premiere of his Flute Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra on a few days’ notice in 2011—and at one point they just started talking about a violin sonata. It’s a rare foray into chamber music for a composer who often prefers the complex sonorities available in large ensembles.
As Leshnoff started writing in early 2022, his father Stephen’s health began to decline after a long, painful illness. Writing the piece became his way of coping, in between visits to the hospital. A few weeks before his father’s death in July 2022, Leshnoff was working on the first movement and got a video call from his mother. His father “couldn't speak at that point,” Leshnoff recalls. “The only way to communicate was giving a thumbs up or thumbs down. I said, ‘Hi, Dad, how are you doing?’ And he gave us a thumbs up. I said, ‘I'm writing a piece. Would you like to hear it?’ And he gave us a thumbs up.” The piece opens with a plaintive, slow-moving melody in the violin with a matching counterpoint in the piano. It’s spare enough to play both parts on the piano with just two hands, but that simplicity belies the weight behind the notes. When Leshnoff stopped, his mom asked his dad if he liked it, and he gave a thumbs up. Leshnoff eerily knew that, although he was playing the piece for his father at that moment, the piece would ultimately be in his father’s memory.
The melody of the first movement is a contemplative string of quarter notes, a line which Leshnoff says will showcase Shaham’s ability to “sing and soar.” The melody is cast as a kind of hymn of mourning which gradually gets more and more agitated. The expansive, fast middle movement is kinetic, utilizing a rhythmic theme that gradually blossoms and merges with the main melody. By the finale, a sense of tranquility descends, which Leshnoff describes as “my father’s soul, released and flying free.”