Sonata a due

The inception of “Sonata a due” occurred thanks to a chance meeting. In October 1960 Farkas represented Hungary at a UNESCO conference in Paris, and on the way rested at the house of an old friend, the conductor László Somogyi, in Geneva. The viola player of the Végh Quartet, György Janzer, and his wife, cellist Éva Czakó, were also staying there. They asked him to write them a viola-cello duo, the main theme of which he noted down a month later at Christmas in the resort of Galyatető in the Mátra Mountains. The work reached completion on 17 March 1961. On 11 October at an evening recital of the composer’s works, Géza Németh and Ede Banda gave its first performance.

All three movements are composed within a twelve-tone system used with a certain freedom, each built on its own tone-row. The source of the previously mentioned theme was revealed to me some decades later by Farkas’s poet friend and writer partner, László Dalos: the initial notes of the main theme following the slow introduction conceal the telephone number of a valued colleague, violinist Vilmos Tátrai, transposed into D-flat pitch. The composer himself described the piece in this way:

After a wide gesturing introduction some bars in length which stands like a gate in front of the work, the first movement written in sonata form starts off. The main theme is drawn over a jaunty ostinato, from which is woven the transition section, then a languorous, emotional secondary theme appears that later gives way to the pulsing, four-part closing theme built on the double stopping of the two instruments. The second movement is a profoundly expressed confession: an intimate dialogue of instruments in ternary form. The third movement is a playful, bantering, ‘irregular’ Rondo. The jaunty secondary theme returns changed yet recognizable. In the trio the cello sings lyrically. To close the piece the introduction is heard once again, providing a frame for the three movements. — Laszló Gombos