The sonatas for unaccompanied viola recorded here, and the music of composer
Günter Raphael
in general, are a true rediscovery on the part of violist
Gregory K. Williams
, who found one of the three sonatas in a Dresden used bookstore and went on to write a dissertation about the group.
Raphael
was quite well-thought-of in his time and was a teacher of
Miklós Rósza
, among others. He and his father both identified as Christian, but he was of Jewish ancestry and was forced to resign his teaching position with the rise of Nazism. So, for a dozen years, his music was not performed, and after that, he suffered from tuberculosis and saw his work disappear, never to recover until now.
Williams
' detailed notes do not identify a specific reason
wrote three unaccompanied viola sonatas, but
Bach
's influence was in the air, and other composers wrote such works. The three sonatas fall into the early, middle, and late periods
identifies, with the first one neoclassic in nature and the second pushing against the boundaries of that style. The
Sonata for solo viola, Op. 46, No. 4
, of 1946 is perhaps the most interesting of the three, with long chromatic lines and tonal and rhythmic ambiguities that inaugurate what
called the tonal 12-tone music of his later years. Everything on the album has the flavor of a labor of love, and the
Affetto
label's engineers, working under
himself as producer at Oktaven Audio in suburban New York City, solve the difficult problem of recording a solo viola. These are works with depth that seem quite likely to be adopted by other violists now that
has brought them to light. ~ James Manheim