Description
Brahms composed a series of chamber music works during a summer visit to Thun, Switzerland in 1886, including his Second Violin Sonata in A major. This wonderfully lyrical sonata is considered one of his most cheerful creations; his biographer Max Kalbeck once described it as a "sonata of love and song". The first movement's second subject quotes the principal motif of Brahms's own song "Wie Melodien zieht es mir", and the other movements are similarly characterized by a melodious intimacy. The close structural cohesion of the sonata was immediately acknowledged by the music critic Eduard Hanslick, who noted that "The three movements form a pure triad of uniformly soothing moods".
This revised Urtext edition is based on the recently-published volume within the New Brahms Complete Edition, guaranteeing the highest degree of scholarly precision. Renowned instrumentalists Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen provide helpful fingerings throughout.
