Begun in 1902, the Viola Sonata did not attain its ultimate form until 1915, and even then Koechlin considered it unfinished and planned to recompose and score it for viola and orchestra, feeling the piano part overloaded, but, in essential aspects, unrealized. His correspondence with the 22-year-old Darius Milhaud, who took the viola part in the premiere with Jeanne Herscher-Clément at the piano on May 27, 1915, (Concert au benefice du Foyer Franco-Belge, Salle des Agriculteurs, Paris) affords an intimate glimpse into Koechlin's work and methods. As the spring premiere loomed, Koechlin was preoccupied with moving from Boulouris to his house at Le Canadel, while he and his wife, a nurse, helped run the Red Cross ambulance from the Hermitage Hospital in St. Raphaël. The Germans had, the previous summer, overrun France's eastern front, precipitating the death of Albéric Magnard and torching his house. On February 27, 1915, Koechlin wrote Milhaud to say that the sonata is essentially finished, but that the piano part of the Scherzo "would need revising carefully to make it somewhat easier, or at least playable." Meanwhile, Milhaud had absorbed several Koechlin songs -- "Le Sommeil de Canope," "Améthyste," "Sur le grève" (the latter furnishing melodic material for the sonata) -- and became a fan. "It is very advanced music in harmonic terms...I have the impression of being in the presence of the music of a composer who belongs to the generation after our own." To Koechlin's occasional creative doubts, Milhaud replies with sanguine appreciations -- "There is a quality of line and expression in [the sonata] which gives the feeling that it is here to stay. I never grow weary of Schubert's songs, and there is no reason why the same should not be true of your works." The Scherzo and Finale continued to be sticking points -- "...scherzo in Italian meant a joke and implied something joyous, but in this case it was something like a bad joke....the scherzo is marked by a certain bitterness and by several 'false notes.'" The first movement's berceuse-like Andante hardly prepares one for the Scherzo's desperately muted "ride to the abyss," the viola's despairing croon set off by the piano's triplet ostinato to plunge into the third-movement Andante, another cradle song, but rippled with strange dreams that become the fourth movement's restless disquiet. The collaboration with Milhaud made Koechlin "feel myself in step with all the young composers, to understand them and to be understood in turn." ~ Adrian Corleonis, All Music Guide
