– Composer: Rosalie Marie Wertheim (19 February 1888 — 27 May 1949)
– Performers: Ursula Schoch (violin), Marcel Worms (piano)
– Year of recording: 2009-2010
Sonata for Violin & Piano in A flat major, written in 1931.
00:00 – I. Allegro con brio
05:02 – II. Andante non troppo lento
09:23 – III. Allegro con moto
Rosy Wertheim was a Jewish Dutch pianist, music educator and composer. She was born in Amsterdam to parents John and Adriana Rosa Gustaaf Wertheim Enthoven. Her father was a banker and Rosalie attended a French boarding school in Neuilly where she took piano lessons. She studied piano with Ulfert Schults and harmony and counterpoint with Bernard Zweers and Sem Dresden. In 1921 she took the state exam in piano and graduated from the Nederlandse Toonkunstenaars Vereniging. From 1921 to 1929, she taught at the Amsterdam Music Lyceum, composed songs and choral works and conducted children’s and women’s choirs.
In 1929 Wertheim moved to Paris where she lived for six years, composing music [and probably this Violin Sonata], and writing for the Amsterdam newspaper Het Volk [The People] on the Parisian music scene, while studying composition and instrumentation from the composer Louis Aubert.
In 1935 she moved to Vienna where she studied counterpoint with Karl Weigl. In 1936 she traveled to New York to give lectures and arrange performance of her works. In 1937, just prior to the start of World War II, she returned to Amsterdam. During the German Occupation, Wertheim gave secret concerts in a cellar where she played music by banned Jewish composers. After September 1942, she went into hiding to escape the Jewish deportations. After the war, Rosy Wertheim taught at the Music School in Laren, but contracted a serious illness and died 27 May 1949 in Laren, the Netherlands.
Dutch flutist Eleonore Pameijer writes about her music: “Rosy Wertheim wrote very lyrical music. She was gifted with a rich and varied sense of harmony. Initially focused on late-romanticism, she flirts with octatonicism for some time, which was quite popular during the 1920’s in The Netherlands (which also can be heard in the compositions of Sem Dresden and Leo Smit). In her later works it is clear that the period in France had a big impact on her composing.”
Wertheim’s compositions show influences of Franck, Debussy, Ravel, Pijper and Stravinsky, and in this particular violin sonata the French influences are very noticeable.