Brahms’ Second Violin Sonata

Cindy Liu and Calvin Liu

Despite growing up under the same roof, and despite the fact that our instruments are divinely compatible, my brother and I seldom made music together. We often played for anyone but ourselves---a jury, a teacher, a parent, some arbitrary definition of achievement. We did not think of music as facilitating creative expression; the idea that it could reflect the deepest, most central aspects of ourselves felt foreign and elusive.

As it often happens in life, time apart---both of us off to college, both of us lost---brought us back together. We found ourselves in the very thing that our identities were once divorced from: music. We played more together when no one else was listening. We understood more how inextricably we loved each other and thus how much we needed music to express it.

This recording represents, in many ways, the essence of this discovery process. The first movement of Brahms’ Second Violin Sonata is tonally sound yet constantly yearning for a harmonic anchor to land on, one it seems to find only in its final phrases. Violin and piano are engaged in an inquisitive, at times impassioned, dialogue. Performing this work, which seems to capture the entire spectrum of human emotion, to an empty hall characteristic of the extraordinary times we are living in, felt full circle. At last, my brother and I have found ourselves, and one another, playing only for us.