Violin Sonata G major op. 78

Brahms’s First Violin Sonata in G major is also known by the sobriquet “Regenliedsonate” (Rain Sonata) because its final movement quotes melodic motifs from his two songs “Regenlied” and “Nachklang” (which likewise has rain as its subject). The dotted opening motif of the finale already pervades the first two movements, thereby contributing to the inner cohesion of this wonderfully expressive, elegiac work.

Brahms’s contemporaries enthusiastically received this sonata, which was completed in 1879. Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, a close friend of the composer, found that one has to “love it like little else in the world”. The musical text of this revised Urtext edition is based on that of the newly completed volume of the New Brahms Complete Edition, which guarantees the highest degree of scholarly precision.