Violin Sonata in a minor, Op. 34

• Beach composed this sonata in 1896, and it was published in 1899.¹ 
• Amy Beach and Franz Kneisel played this work’s premiere on January 4, 1897, in a Kneisel Quartet concert in New York City. Beach and Kneisel went on to frequently perform this work together.²
  • Beach’s Piano Quintet in f-sharp minor, Op. 67 was another collaboration with the Kneisel Quartet. 
• Beach chose this piece for her European concert debut: she played this sonata with a Dr Bülau in a concert in Dresden on October 28, 1912.³

Movements 

1. Allegro moderato 
2. Scherzo: Molto vivace 
3. Largo con dolore 
4. Allegro con fuoco⁴

1. “Violin Sonata, Op. 34 (Beach, Amy Marcy),” IMSLP, accessed April 7, 2022, https://imslp.org/wiki/Violin_Sonata%2C_Op.34_(Beach%2C_Amy_Marcy).
2. Barbara Sonies, introduction to Amy Beach, Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 34, ed. (Mt. Airy, PA: Hildegard Publishing, 1994).
3. Adrienne Fried Block, Amy Beach: Passionate Victorian: The Life and Work of an American Composer, 1867-1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 183.
4. Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, Sonate (Boston: Arthur P. Schmidt, 1889).