Composer’s note:

I wrote the Violin Sonata in 2018. I think of it as my "graduation piece" of sorts, because shortly after finishing it, I realized I was no longer content to write music solely for my own fulfillment—I wanted to share it and hear it performed.

I'd say this piece is intentionally stylistically motley—not because I set out to write an eclectic work, but because I deliberately allowed it to become one. Every composer has influences. One of my strongest has always been Dmitry Shostakovich, and for years I felt I had to keep that influence in check simply because composers are expected to be original. Besides, it’s not like I can compete with him in his own game. He is very hard to compete with, period. But at least if it’s “my” game, then I am not inviting comparisons. But this one time I decided I’d let it all hang loose and let myself do whatever I felt like doing and not censor myself at all. It turned out that Shostakovich-like sound world is not the only one I’ve been suppressing—what came out was a lot of the barren sonorities of open fifths, and some bits of old-style Russian popular music, some earnestly romantic and some less dignified, some Barber, and, somewhat surprisingly, some Bartók (not too much). I’d like to think that some elements that don’t sound like anyone else have also manifested themselves, but, in any case, this piece was meant to be unapologetically eclectic, and I had fun writing it.

The 2018 version was workshopped by my Ukrainian friends Mikhail Rzhanov and Vladislav Kruskal; the links to the video recording of them reading through it are above. These videos were made during the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the minimal lighting of the first video is the result of a power loss due to the Russian bombings of Kyiv. After hearing it then, I felt there were some structural deficiencies, and this feeling was confirmed during the premiere of the same version in 2024, but I only got around to revising it in 2026, eight years after finishing the first version. The revision process was strange—it was like I remembered being there, but I was no longer the same person, certainly not the same composer, and as I was revising it, I felt I needed to defer to my younger self as some choices I made back then now felt rather alien. Revising the piece felt less like working on my own piece and more like touching up a student’s work—fixing things that definitely needed fixing while respecting the composer’s personality.

 With all that said, I like the piece; I think it’s a lot of fun—well, if you find dark, gloomy, and intermittently wild things fun like I do. I let myself go while writing it, and it gives a chance for the performers to do the same. It is reasonably traditional in structure with its three fast-slow-fast movements, and it certainly is a concertante-style sonata with both players given plenty of opportunity to display their virtuosity.