Nina Karmon/Oliver Triendl - Toivo Kuula: Violin Sonatas

Although Toivo Kuula was one of the few pupils taught by Sibelius, he never really had to struggle to emerge from his teacher�s shadow into his own independent light. Kuula originally had wanted to be a violinist and continued to favour the violin even after the playing of this instrument had receded into the background and his activities as a composer had come to occupy the foreground. The Sonata Movement of 1906 already attests to the composer�s remarkable mastery in the design of musical processes. The essential difference between this piece and the Violin Sonata Op. 1 composed during the following year, when Kuula was a student in Helsinki, is that in the latter work his own voice is present from the very beginning. As a press report demonstrates, its premiere at the Music Academy in Helsinki in 1907 turned out to be a great success for the composer, who was not yet twenty-four years old. The critic Karl Flodin (1858-1925) remarked: �The sonata is not a pupil�s composition but the product of a mature, independent, and brilliant talent [�]. [It] has atmosphere, imagination, poetry, and power, with a strong expression of will.�