Sonata for Viola and Piano (2026)
viola, piano
viola, piano
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Program Note
Throughout my time at Juilliard, I have had the pleasure to count among my classmates violist Leslie Ashworth—first as master’s students, then as Ear Training teaching fellows, and now as doctoral students. For her final DMA recital, Leslie approached me with the idea of a sonata for viola and piano as a form of capstone for our time as students.
Wanting to write something new and substantial for the viola repertoire, but simultaneously wanting to ground it in the great classical tradition of sonatas in general, I consciously sought a broader inspiration for this work—hearkening as far back as the violin, cello, and keyboard sonatas of Bach and Beethoven, than to more recent works for the viola. (Brahms, of course, was an inescapable influence!) The first movement—a sweeping, energetic sonata-allegro—presents a passionate theme in the viola against running passages in the piano, setting up a movement filled with rhythmic vivacity and heavily colored by modality. An abrupt adagio in the middle of the movement offsets what otherwise is a whirlwind start-to-finish. Likewise balancing out the first movement in this two-part sonata is the second and final movement, a sort of passacaglia, in which the opening seven measures (presented by the viola alone) are constantly repeated, varied, and commented upon in different ways. Although this movement maintains a gentle demeanor at the outset, it too gathers steam and careens to a ferocious finale.
—Jacob Beranek
Throughout my time at Juilliard, I have had the pleasure to count among my classmates violist Leslie Ashworth—first as master’s students, then as Ear Training teaching fellows, and now as doctoral students. For her final DMA recital, Leslie approached me with the idea of a sonata for viola and piano as a form of capstone for our time as students.
Wanting to write something new and substantial for the viola repertoire, but simultaneously wanting to ground it in the great classical tradition of sonatas in general, I consciously sought a broader inspiration for this work—hearkening as far back as the violin, cello, and keyboard sonatas of Bach and Beethoven, than to more recent works for the viola. (Brahms, of course, was an inescapable influence!) The first movement—a sweeping, energetic sonata-allegro—presents a passionate theme in the viola against running passages in the piano, setting up a movement filled with rhythmic vivacity and heavily colored by modality. An abrupt adagio in the middle of the movement offsets what otherwise is a whirlwind start-to-finish. Likewise balancing out the first movement in this two-part sonata is the second and final movement, a sort of passacaglia, in which the opening seven measures (presented by the viola alone) are constantly repeated, varied, and commented upon in different ways. Although this movement maintains a gentle demeanor at the outset, it too gathers steam and careens to a ferocious finale.
—Jacob Beranek
