Wai-te-ata Music Press

Rod Biss composed his Sonata for Violin and Piano in 1957 while studying at the Royal College of Music, London.

While he later reflected that his most formative musical training had come some years earlier at Victoria University College with Douglas Lilburn and Frederick Page, the Royal College provided him with a vital performance connection: the superb violinist Frances Mason. Together with New Zealander Ashley Lawrence at the piano, Mason gave the premiere of the Sonata at a private concert, followed in 1958 by the work’s first public performance at the Leighton House Art Gallery in Holland Park, London.

The Sonata reveals Biss’s deep love of melody and rhythm, nurtured by his study of miniature scores. While rooted in traditional sonata and variation forms, the work also reflects his enthusiasm for French music, and for the popular dance rhythms of the time. He was particularly influenced by the music of Darius Milhaud, whose bitonal harmonies and South American rhythms were appealing, and left their traces in this work.