The most important chamber music, as well as beautiful, written for violin and piano. Fantastic version offered by this duo of artists Tchijik-Urroz.

The Sonata no.1 for violin and piano in G major, op.78, can be heard as a compendium of the characteristics of Brahms’s very personal embodiment of Romanticism: it combines sweet lyricism, restrained expressivity, and emotional urgency. All of it in an unbroken melodic flow in the violin, which sings from beginning to end without ever being disrupted by the piano. Brahms’s Second Sonata for this medium was composed in the summer of 1886 while vacationing in the Bernese Oberland. The Sonata was published as op.100, sandwiched between two other major chamber works, the Cello Sonata in F major, op.99, and the Piano Trio in C minor, op.101. Brahms gave the work the formal title of “Sonata for Piano and Violin,” perhaps indicating that the piano part is as important (or more) than the violin part. Whether this excuse is legitimate or pure speculation, it is clear that the piano assumes a leading role in this sonata; it becomes evident as the piano introduces the first theme of the initial Allegro, subtitled “Amabile” (an apt marking for a sonata that is lyrical and tuneful throughout), a melody that some have found similar to the beginning of the “Prize Song” of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. In the Sonata no.3 in D minor, op.108, Brahms achieved a maximum level of economy of means. Unlike the preceding two sonatas, the third has four movements instead of three, yet the highly concentrated approach taken by the composer makes it rather short, about 20 minutes in total. Composed between 1886 and 1888, it was dedicated to Brahms’s champion Hans von Bülow, a friend and colleague who had once been a staunch supporter of Wagner – before they fell out and became enemies.