Winternacht

Winternacht, a 4-movement sonata for violin & piano, was written to accompany Johannes Brahms’ IIIrd Sonata. This was the challenge of the commission by the Déséquilibres ensemble, Agnes Pyka and Laurent Wagschal, for the premiere at La Ferme du Buisson on January 29, 2019.

It was a formidable challenge to maintain one’s own style and language while weaving links with the masterpiece that is the IIIrd Sonata. Extracting a melodic cell, contracting it or, on the contrary, stretching it, reversing it, in a way distorting it. Does it have to be recognizable? You have to sense it anyway. When you play this work yourself, an indelible mark is established, underlying the writing at every moment, conscious or unconscious of the memory of the sounds, like a kind of subliminal image, a forgotten memory.

In spite of myself, my language has undergone a notable change in its substance, and I was delighted to let this kind of romanticism settle in quite naturally during the writing of this work.
Graciane Finzi