Haydn: The Complete Sonatas for Piano with Violin - Şahan Arzruni & Anahid Ajemian

is intriguing that this album is the first complete recording of Haydn's piano-violin sonatas. Until recently, duo sonatas, as conceived by violinists, were considered to be vehicles to show off fiddlers' virtuosic abilities. In many instances, the piano part was treated as secondary in importance, and performances were tailored to favor the stringed instrumentalist.

However, there was a time when the roles were reversed, the keyboard instrument taking the lead and the violin playing a subordinate part. The accompanied keyboard sonata was a phenomenon peculiar to the Classic period The expression itself was first used by Charles Avison in 1764. Subsequently, this genre became one of the standard settings of that time, and was particularly popular between 1760 and 1785, when it was used by virtually every major composer, including Bocherini, Clementi, Haydn and Mozart. William S. Newman, in his exhaustive work, A history of the Sonata Idea, traces the emergence and development of this genre with great insight.

Reports of harpsichordists “accompanied" by violinists go back as far as the 1730s. In all likelihood, the term referred either to settings in which the violin imply doubled the keyboard line or applied to a situation where the keyboard player realized the thorough bass merely by playing one of the upper parts of a trio sonata with his right hand while the violinist played the other. Perhaps, the violin was used to complement the transparent keyboard texture of the light, elegant gallant style and then, again, it may have been to provide a musical line simple and unexposed enough for the dilettante violinist to play when he wanted to join in. Apropos of the preceding, it is highly amusing to read an advertisement in the Wiener-Zeitung in 1789: "Wanted by nobleman a servant who plays the violin well and is able to accompany difficult piano sonatas." One wonders who was in need of whom!