Sonata no. 3 (1998)
by Richard Lane
Piano Accompaniment - Sheet Music

Viola and piano - Grade 4-5

SKU: ET.VA14

Composed by Richard Lane. Contemporary. Composed 1998. Duration 11'. Editions BIM #VA14. Published by Editions BIM (ET.VA14).

ISBN 9790207010087.

Richard Lane’s Viola Sonata No. 3 is his final work for viola and piano, written in November 1998. Pianist Betty Rosenblum and I gave the premiere performance and recorded it one year later.
Richard Lane began writing works for viola (including his Viola Sonata No. 1 for viola and piano) in the early 1960’s for Myron Rosenblum, and he continued writing extensively for viola in diverse combinations until the end of his life. The Sonata No. 3 is, in many ways, the culmination of his thoughts for this genre, and it contains some of Lane’s most beautiful and characteristically lyrical writing, especially in the second movement.
For form and style, this sonata belongs in a category with Schubert’s Arpeggione, Schumann’s Märchenbilder and other traditional staples of the viola’s repertoire, and it would fit well in a recital program where those works do. In structure, it is quite traditional. However, Lane’s voice, though firmly rooted in Romanticism (especially harmonically), gives the work a more modern perspective as well. As would be expected, there are some twentieth-century American traits in this work to be sure, but one can also detect some French influence, especially in the first movement, which is not present in most of his other compositions.
To complete the sonata, Lane chose to make the third movement a short virtuoso ending, which he called ‘The Wind In the Trees’, an accurate description of how the viola voice relates to the piano line. This makes for an exciting conclusion to what is overall a lyrical and poignant sonata.

Scott Slapin,
viola recitalist.