Brahms’s Violin Sonatas: Style, Structure, Performance Joel Lester

Abstract

Joel Lester’s Brahms’s Violin Sonatas offers an analytical and historical–contextual perspective on Brahms’s violin sonatas, the scherzo from the F–A–E Sonata, and contemporary violin style. It is a guide that takes curious readers, performers, and analysts by the hand, showing them how to develop a detailed, score-based understanding that can serve as a stepping stone towards nuanced, knowledgeable, and inspired interpretations. The book includes an introduction, six chapters (separated into two parts, ‘Brahms’s Notes’ and ‘Brahms’s Musical Narratives’), around 160 score examples, over twenty-five tables, and many formal diagrams, reductions, and graphs to illustrate the main points and arguments, all exquisitely set and explained with clarity and visual appeal. Part I, ‘Brahms’s Notes’, more specifically, is a section aimed at contextualizing the sonatas with style markers often associated with Brahms more generally. What ‘sounds like Brahms’, Lester argues, often breaks down into elements from the Classical and Romantic styles;...