Wieniawski: Souvenir De Posen Op.3 (Viool en Piano)

Souvenir de Posen Op. 3 was probably composed in the first half of 1854, when the nineteen-year-old Henryk Wieniawski still performed with his younger brother Józef, the pianist. Despite its simple construction and a smaller number of technical difficulties than in other works by Wieniawski, the composition bears clear marks of the famous virtuosos individual composing style. In the piece by this exponent of the Franco-Belgian violin school one can hear both temperament and vivacity, the beauty of the charming and unassuming cantilena, polyphonic play, single and double harmonics, as well as fragments played on a given string all the way up to the highest positions; in other words, all that marks the style of Wieniawskis compositions: a combination of melodic beauty and brilliance of violin devices, which produces a whole that is touching, sometimes moving and enchanting.