Nikolay Myaskovsky - Violin Sonata in F major, Op. 70 (1947)

Nikolai Myaskovsky in 1912.

20 April 1881 – 8 August 1950), was a Russian and Soviet composer. He is sometimes referred to as the "Father of the Soviet Symphony". Myaskovsky was awarded the Stalin Prize five times, more than any other composer.

 

Violin Sonata in F major, Op. 70 (1947)

1. Allegro amabile 2. Theme (Andante con moto e molto cantabile), 12 Variations and Coda (8:21​)

Alexander (or Sasha) Rozhdestvensky, violin and Viktoria Postnikova, piano

The first performance was on 1947 April 29. David Oistrakh, violin and Lev Oborin, piano

 

Stung by the many accusations in the Soviet press of "individualism, decadence, pessimism, formalism and complexity", Myaskovsky wrote to Asafiev in 1940, "Can it be that the psychological world is so foreign to these people?" When somebody described Zhdanov's decree against "formalism" to him as "historic", he is reported to have retorted "Not historic – hysterical". Shostakovich, who visited Myaskovsky on his deathbed, described him afterwards to the musicologist Marina Sabinina as "the most noble, the most modest of men". Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom Myaskovsky wrote his Second Cello Sonata late in life, described him as "a humorous man, a sort of real Russian intellectual, who in some ways resembled Turgenev".