Krenek: Sonata for solo violin

Day 223

Krenek: Sonata no 1 for solo violin

Christoph Schickedanz

Krenek’s career is a fascinating example of how the political events of the 20th century shaped the development of so many musicians. He had a massive success with his early opera Jonny Spielt Auf, which was immediately taken up by many German opera houses. Wikipedia says that it received more than 400 performances in its first year. The Jazz and the ‘negro’ elements in the work fell foul of the Nazi regime, who denounced it as degenerate music. Krenek emigrated to the US where he had a long career as a teacher and a musicologist. His music went through many styles, from atonality through to neo-classism and serialism with experiments in electronic and aleatoric music.

I saw Jonny Spielt Auf when it was revived by Opera North some years ago. The Jazz elements were rather fun but I remember much of the rest as being rather turgid. I don’t think that I have heard another another note of Krenek’s music since. This sonata for solo violin dates from 1925 so is quite an early piece. It is full length work in four movements which in total last for more than half an hour. It must take astonishing powers of concentration and technique to play it live in concert.  Stylistically it hovered between Begian/Schoenbergian atonality in the first and third movements with something more akin to Bartok or even Shostakovich in the second, scherzo, movement. All three of these movements showed evidence of a strong musical imagination and they held my attention throughout. The final movement was rather disappointing in comparison. It started off in an almost jaunty neo-classical style and then I thought rather lost its way. That was a pity because otherwise I was impressed by the piece. Again, as I have said before in this short series about solo violin works, the influence of Bach is everywhere. The musical language is of course quite different but the understanding of how to write for the solo violin, such how to contrast chordal passages with more freely-moving melodic material is rooted in the experience of the Bach sonatas and partitas.