Sonata A flat major op.57 for Piano Dora Pejacevic / Arr. Ivan Zivanovic

Sonate As-Dur Nr. 2 Opus 57 für Klavier

Piano sonata in one movement.

The Second Piano Sonata was written in Naice in 1921, and is the penultimate composition of Dora Pejacevic. A look at the scores of the composer's two piano sonatas reveals the departure travelled from her First Piano Sonata Op. 36 in B flat minor (1915), which follows the traditional formal organisation of the sonata, and does not deviate from the premises of Romanticism; the Second Sonata has a much more contemporary concept, the form being not a rigid framework, rather a musical process.

The sonata is composed in the form of a single-movement sonata-fantasy, which reveals the possible influence of Franz Liszt. The composer called it on the autograph of the work a sonata in one movement.

The first subject, which at the beginning appears in punctuated rhythm in the bottom stave, passes through transformations, changing its content and meaning. After an impulsive onset, there are development procedures aimed at developing motifs and modulations. Motifs go through many transformations, building up the musical tissue with the technique of permanent variation. A transitional and a second subject appear, based on thirds, becoming participants of dramatic contrasts.
The composer's imagination is outlined above all in a very individual harmonic expression with frequent modulations on the principle of fourths-based chromatic similarity; the dynamics of the harmonic rhythm determines other parameters like rhythm, melody, and metrics, while the coherence of the form is obtained with thematic similarity. The Sonata achieves its culmination in the fugato which makes use of the second subject with the tritone interval.

Dora Pejacevic wrote about her creative process in the piano sonata: Floating off into that invisible world of the most inherent interiority I become only then completely my own self, and that self that at that time in that heavenly distant refuge feels too filled with itself, searches an expression, searches relief from that great spiritual pressure, which is in itself a kind of delight and this liberation is achieved at the moment the composition comes into being (from a letter to Rosa Lumbe Mladota, Naice, 6 June 1920)