Sonata for Violin No. 1, RT VIII/6: Violin, Solo with Piano, Book

Frederick Delius (1862-1934) began his Sonata for Violin No. 1, RT VIII/6 in 1905, the same year in which he was working on the monumental A Mass of Life, but set the sonata aside amid a succession of major compositions and did not return to complete it until 1914; the unusually long gestation helps explain its position as a bridge between the composer's earlier chamber music and the fluid chromatic language of his mature period. Although called the First Sonata, it was not Delius's first work in the genre (an earlier Violin Sonata in B major of 1892-93 remained unpublished during his lifetime) and the completed work unfolds in two interconnected movements, 1. With Easy Movement but not Quick - Slow; 2. With Vigour and Animation, with themes transformed and recalled across the work rather than treated according to conventional Classical sonata procedures. Before publication, Arthur Catterall, then leader of the Hallé Orchestra, revised and fingered the violin part, while R. J. Forbes, Principal of the Royal Manchester College of Music, edited and revised the piano part; these two musicians gave the world premiere on February 24, 1915 at the Royal Manchester College of Music, at a concert benefiting its Students' Sustentation Fund, with Delius present, and remarkably they played the new sonata twice during the program. The score was subsequently published in London by Forsyth in 1917, and violinist May Harrison became an important early advocate, performing it with Hamilton Harty at London's Aeolian Hall on June 16, 1915, and later making its first recording with Arnold Bax. Today, Sonata for Violin No. 1, RT VIII/6 remains less frequently encountered than the central violin sonatas of Brahms, Franck, or Debussy, but it holds a secure place in the British chamber-music repertoire and is increasingly valued as one of Delius's most substantial instrumental works, its rhapsodic continuity, rich harmonic color, and unusually equal partnership between violin and piano providing a particularly concentrated expression of his mature musical language. Reprint of the Catterall/Forbes edition.