Strauss & Korngold: little known works by well-known composers in passionate performances from Francesca Dego & Alessandro Taverna at Conway Hall

Alessandro Taverna & Francesca Dego

Korngold: Violin Sonata, Schoenberg: Phantasy, Richard Strauss: Violin Sonata; Francesca Dego, Alessandro Taverna; Conway Hall
Reviewed 31 May 206

Youthful Korngold and Strauss before he was Strauss in a remarkable pair of big late-romantic sonatas that remain surprisingly little known, in passionate and committed performances 

On Sunday 31 May 2026, violinist Francesca Dego and pianist Alessandro Taverna brought a pair of big violin sonatas to Conway Hall, both works by well-known composers yet neither work known. This remarkable pairing featured the violin sonatas by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Richard Strauss alongside Arnold Schoenberg’s late Phantasy. Beforehand, I gave the pre-concert talk exploring the background to both the Korngold and the Strauss.

Korngold was a child prodigy and was writing sophisticated music young, so it is no surprise to find that his Violin Sonata was completed when he was just 16 and the work was premiered in Berlin by the distinguished pairing of Carl Flesch and Artur Schnabel. It is a substantial work, four movements lasting almost 40 minutes. The opening movement plunged straight in with florid writing and a rich dramatic harmonic language. There were positive fistfuls of notes at times, pushing chromaticism and tonality to the limit. The scherzo was full of vivid vigour with lots of off rhythms and engaging character, then the slow movement was surprisingly romantic, with dense harmonies. Lush and intense, both performers made this highly impassioned. Throughout the work I was impressed by their commitment to the music, making all this complexity seem expressive. The finale movement began with a lightly flowing chromatic melody that, harmonically speaking, wandered rather. There were later fugato moments, but alongside these formal structures sat a violin melody straight out of one of Korngold’s films!

After the interval we began with Schoenberg’s Phantasy written in 1949 (when the composer was 75) and commissioned by the violinist who premiered it, Adolph Koldofsky. Dark and dramatic, and often rather jagged in outline, the music was characterised by swift changes of mood. If it wasn’t so dark you might call it skittish, yet there were moments of lyrical intensity, but also real violence.

We finished with Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata. Written in 1887 when the composer was 23 and already experience. But it came at a time when things were changing for Strauss: musically he was embracing the music of the future (via Wagner and Liszt) and two years later would come his first international success, the tone poem Don Juan. He was also falling in love. And whilst the sonata might look back to the music beloved of Strauss’s father Franz, it also holds young Richard’s thoughts about his future wife, Pauline.

The first movement was led by the lyrically impulsive violin, and Robert Schumann never felt far away. Strauss created a remarkably lyrical outpouring with lots of notes for both performers, and ultimately you felt that the music rambled somewhat. The slow movement was almost a song without words, with Strauss conjuring almost endless melody, developing in lyrical intensity in the middle movement. The finale opened with the piano on its own, dark and threatening with thick chords. When Dego’s violin joined in the music moved back to Schumann. The music mixed vivid vigour with lyrical fervour climaxing with a big romantic moment with strenuous violin writing and cascades of notes.

Throughout the recital both performers impressed with their command of this complex music and the way they made all those fistfuls of piano notes and cascades of violin notes become vibrant and expressive.