SKU: HL.49045822

ISBN 9781540024749. UPC: 888680737764. 9.25x12.0x0.29 inches.

The Kreutzer Sonata was originally dedicated not to Rudolphe Kreutzer (who never performed it) but to George Bridgetower, a famed 18th-century Afro-European concert violinist. In an early draft, Beethoven jokingly labeled the piece in starkly racialized terms: Sonata Mulattica composed for the mulatto Brischdauer, big wild mulatto composer.Beethoven and Bridgetower performed the premiere, which was by all accounts a success, and even featuring some improvised embellishment by the violinist. While celebrating afterwards, the two quarreled about what Beethoven construed as Bridgetower's insult of a female acquaintance; the composer then revoked the original dedication, adding Kreutzer's name instead. The work gained acclaim, while Bridgetower's career languished; he eventually died in poverty.Bridgetower has been the subject of considerable research and speculation, most notably in poet Rita Dove's book, Sonata Mulattica. From our 21st-century vantage, considering Bridgetower's unique circumstance, we can only see him as an ambiguous figure who, in embodying difference, provoked inspiration, fantasy, desire, anger and, finally, erasure.My piece is a collection of imaginings about George Bridgetower. It is not programmatic, but it takes on an episodic character, assembled from contrasting fragments. The dance rhythms, recurring figures and gestural contours are intended to feature the embodied expertise and expressivity of the performers, who at times must access liminal sounds and execute complex synchronies. I am grateful to Jenny Koh and Shai Wosner for involving me in their beautiful, virtuosic music-making.

SKU: HH.HH423-FSP

ISBN 9790708146247.

Eberl's Sonata in D major, Op. 20, the sixth of seven sonatas with violin, was composed around 1803 and dedicated to Dorothea Ertmann, the highly regarded pianist who many have suggested as Beethoven's 'Immortal Beloved', and to whom that composer dedicated his Piano Sonata in A major, Op. 101. Unlike many of Eberl's lesser contemporaries, in its duration, formal and harmonic novelty, and in the lively relationship between the violin and keyboard, his Op. 20 shares much of the musical ambition and quality of Beethoven's works in this genre. 1803 saw the publication of Eberl's Op. 20, and Beethoven's set of three sonatas with violin, Op. 30, all produced by the Bureau des Arts et d'Industrie firm in Vienna. Beethoven's set were advertised for sale in the Wiener Zeitung in May 1803, days after the premiere of his Op. 47 sonata with violin (given by George Bridgetower and Beethoven, but later dedicated to Rudolphe Kreutzer). Eberl's Op. 20 was advertised in the Wiener Zeitung six weeks later, in July 1803.