38. Something Different

Michael Tilson Thomas: Grace Strauss: Sonata for violin and piano in E-flat Major, Op. 18 This week on “The Concert,” we’re listening to pieces that reveal different sides of the composers who wrote them, music you might not expect. The meat of the program is Richard Strauss’s violin sonata in E-flat Major. This sonata, written at roughly the same time as the grand, well-loved orchestral “Don Juan,” contains that same sort of melody and lusciousness in miniature. Before the sonata, we’ll hear a newer piece, American composer Michael Tilson Thomas’s charming “Grace,” a jazzy song, intimate in scale, but full of affection. Written in honor of Leonard Bernstein’s 70th Birthday, it seems a fitting homage to that great American composer, a lover of song.