Antonín Dvorák

If the "New World" Symphony, Op. 95, and the "American" String Quartet, Op. 95, are the best-known products of Antonín Dvorák's years in the United States, the little Sonatina in G major for violin and piano, Op. 100 -- sometimes called the "Indian Lament" Sonatina -- may well be the most obscure; yet it is a charming work that deserves better than its relegation to the learning books of young violinists. To hear it played by highly skilled musicians is, for many, to hear the piece for the first time.

The Sonatina, which Dvorák probably composed during the same year as those two more famous works (1893), is in four movements: Allegro risoluto, Larghetto, Scherzo (molto vivace), and Allegro. The first movement's principal tune has a firm rhythmic spine, its second tune a gentle plaintiveness; there is just a hint of American folk music in the movement -- a light syncopation here (perhaps Dvorák's favorite "Americanism"), a modal inflection there, a pentatonic scale there.

The following Larghetto earned the Sonatina the nickname "Indian Lament." The succession of its three melodies -- one in G minor, one in B flat major, and one in G major -- has to it the same wistfulness, and the same sudden brightening and then softening of mood, that we hear in the famous slow movement of the "New World" Symphony.

The Scherzo takes the very first gesture of the Allegro risoluto as its starting-point. The Allegro finale is a substantial sonata-allegro movement, with three wonderful themes to claim as its own: the opening, syncopated idea in G major, a subsidiary thought in E minor, very dancelike and built around a repeating marcato cell, and finally a rich tranquillo melody (very much out of the "New World" trough) that closes the exposition.