The violin sonata no. 1 in A minor, opus 105 of Robert Schumann was written the week of September 12– 16 September 1851.

   Schumann’s first movement, designated “With passionate expression,” sets a mood of quiet unrest with the main theme beginning in the violin’s low, throaty range. Throughout the piano does not merely “arpeggiate,” but exhibits the distinctive multiple voices and textures that are quintessentially Schumann. A special feature of this movement is the masterful blurring of the border between development and recapitulation that became such a Romantic art.

 

   The Allegretto shows the intimate charm of many of Schumann’s piano miniatures. Twice he interrupts with contrasting episodes—the first in the contemplative manner of Eusebius, the introverted fictional character of his prose and musical writings, and the second à la Florestan, his happy, extroverted persona.

 

   The finale cavorts like a scherzo, but with a demonic cast, as opposed to the elfin scherzos characteristic of Schumann’s contemporary Mendelssohn. A wonderful major-mode middle episode imparts a lyrical warmth to offset the more “brusque” drive of the main theme. Toward the end Schumann shows his concern for unity across movements by reintroducing the low restless main theme of the first movement before the final fiendish push to the close.