DEBUSSY VIOLIN SONATA IN G MINOR

MASTERCLASS

Fedor Rudin explores the emotionally volatile first movement of a sonata written by an anxious composer tormented by illness, old age and war From Debussy Violin Sonata in G minor. Urtext edition, paperbound with marked and unmarked string parts. Ed. Ernst-Günter Heinemann. Pf fingering Klaus Schilde. Vn fingering and bowing Kurt Guntner. Order no.HN410, ISMN 979-0-2018-0410-1. €20.00. Printed with permission of G. Henle Verlag, Munich © 1997

This French music has been very close to my heart since I first started work on it when I was perhaps 18 and it’s one of the pieces that I’ve played the most.It is also very popular in recitals, but despite its accessible and pure harmonic, melodic and formal structure, few musicians bring out its emotional complexity successfully

Debussy wrote this sonata in 1917, during the First World War, when he was an old man suffering from serious health issues. While on the surface it might sound light, simple and optimistic, there is something far darker behind the score that can make it challenging to understand. I did not pay enough attention to that fact when I was younger, because I was too focused on enjoying the beautiful French impressionistic harmonies that are so far removed from the music’s deeper meaning and all of the insecurity, pain and uncertainty hidden between the lines.

Approach to fingering

Normally I don’t write anything on my music. Instead I prefer to keep the score empty and sometimes – at least in less technically challenging passages – I’ll find new fingering solutions during a concert. All my past violin teachers, and also many violinists in my close circle, believe that you have to plan everything, and that can be a good idea for intonation, but I also like to play with spontaneity, using half-positions whenever I can, and with shifts on semitones for maximum smoothness.

The four strings of a violin have completely different characters, so if I want a change of scene, I always try to change string and choose fingerings to bring out the colour and character of every phrase. ‘Practicality’ is the lowest priority. I move to the G string in bar 8 to bring out the new colour, for example, and I move on to the D string to bring out the new smooth atmosphere in bar 24. If I decide to shift up on to the D string for the up-beat, I play the dolce vibrato change even more consciously for a change in colour.

THE SOLOIST

NAME FEDOR RUDIN

NATIONALITY FRENCH–RUSSIAN

STUDIED WITH MIROSLAV ROUSSINE, SVETLIN ROUSSEV, ZAKHAR BRON, PIERRE AMOYAL, BORIS KUSCHNIR

RECORDS FOR ORCHID CLASSICS

PHOTOS NIKOLAJ LUND

‘I toy with the colours, as though moving between a concrete state and one that is just a figment of the imagination’

Rudin’s CD Heritage is now available from Orchid Classics. Listen to him perform the Debussy

Sonata at bit.ly/3k3FZIl

The opening phrases

Despite the simplicity of the G minor arpeggio line that begins this sonata, we should not play with a ‘matt’ sound that resembles a beautiful Monet-style bed of colour. The music is espressivo and needs vibrato and a subtle but more brilliant finish that is not too ‘nice’.

There should be anxiety and tension in the sound, especially for the unexpected and atmospheric E flat in bar 8. I then give more to the hairpin in bar 10 than I do to the second hairpin in bar 13, because there is more tension in its D7 harmony than there is in the regular C major chord that follows.

In bars 17–18 Debussy writes a crescendo followed by a subito piano, and here it’s important to save as much bow as possible to begin the crescendo, and then to increase the bow speed from the elbow to help us to switch more dramatically to piano immediately afterwards. I play from the middle of the bow in bar 18, using more speed than pressure to produce a very French sound.

Spontaneous shifts of emotion

The obsessive repetition from bars 30 and 42 is insistent and disturbing, with augmented intervals that give the impression of someone who is mentally unwell. Their intimacy contrasts dramatically with the expressionistic outburst from bar 56, which is like a scary scream that comes out of nowhere. Here we have very little time to move from a bowing that is motoric, rhythmic and technically cold into one that is fast and emotional, with a passionate vibrato. The emotions are unhealthily spontaneous, as though the music is gasping for breath.

For the l’istesso tempo from bar 64 the intervals are again simple but expressive, as at the beginning. Many violinists play glissandos that are not written here, but Debussy is clear that he wants these drunken slides in bars 72–73, 136–137, 140–141, 240–241 and nowhere else, so I choose to follow what is written. I then play on the G string from bar 88, as far over the fingerboard as I can and with very little vibrato, so that my violin hardly sounds like a violin any more. This helps me to contrast in colour with the piano, which is playing in the same register.

After this I emphasise the singing, Spanish-influenced grace notes in bars 92 and 94, which to me are much more than just decoration. I articulate the harmonics from bar 102 in a similar way to the left hand of the piano, with a clear start and a fast bow speed, as though in each bar a light suddenly switches on in a different place in a landscape. Many people play this in a sentimental way, but to me that doesn’t make any sense.

Uncertain realities

When this theme returns from bar 120, I think of an old man who can hear voices but doesn’t know what is real and what is imaginary. The violin doubles the left hand of the piano again, but this time our notes are tied together with an expressive legato line. I toy with the colours, as though moving between a concrete state and one that is just a figment of the imagination.

In the repeated G flats from bar 133, it is as though the old man is searching blindly for something that might not exist, until the surrealistic change in harmony in bar 140 brings him back from this demented hallucination into a bitter, insecure reality. I usually move on to the G string here for a change of colour. From the return to the opening material in bar 154, the atmosphere grows steadily more anxious and unbearable.

We have two layers of melody from bar 186, which we can bring out by using most of the bow for each the resonant, chromatic crotchets (q) on the E string, then the rest of the bow for the decorative quavers (e) that follow. From bar 192 we can really bring out the dramatic forte by using a wider, faster vibrato but keeping the same bow speed for a bigger effect. I divide the bowing from bar 194 for even more sound, and I don’t take too much breath for the comma between bars 195 and 196 to avoid breaking the musical sense of anxiety. It is as though our old-man protagonist needs to talk about something that is troubling him, so this shouldn’t be a breath that ends something and then prepares to start again. It shouldn’t be that healthy. Instead it can be unsure and uncomfortable as we return to the opening melody and, from bar 209, evoke darker memories that move into a dying ritenuto and smorzando. Again we have to switch quickly from one colour and emotional level to another, from the bitterly realistic to the delusional, like someone anxiously listening to bombs that are falling many miles away.

We have to switch from one emotional level to another, from the bitterly realistic to the delusional

For me, to play a ritenuto in bar 223 can ruin the stretto that starts in bar 220. This is forte with a crescendo, and unaccompanied, but it doesn’t make any sense to drag it out and enjoy it as though it’s the triumphant ending to the exposition of the Brahms Violin Concerto! The music continues with an extreme change of register in bar 226 but without stopping or losing any of its anxious, tense feeling.

In the coda from bar 238, we finally have the concretisation of the fear that Debussy had earlier in the movement, an octave higher than before to bring it from the imagination into reality. There is something very worrying about it, and yet to me it is also very positive, with its singing Spanish sound and bright, C major chord, like a beautiful blaze of sunshine that comes out of nowhere.

INTERVIEW BY PAULINE HARDING