ALMEIDA Horn and piano sonata ("Wiener Sonate") op. 98 (When I call this sonata «Viennese sonata», one can not think it’s some kind of reference to the 2nd Vienna School - that I homage in the Quartet, «Rêve d’un rêve» or, above all, in the 2nd movement of the Violas Sonata, for instance. This Sonata is a homage, indeed, but exclusively to the City of Vienna itself; more than that, it is a homage to the verbal expressivity called the Viennese dialect - a rude language, with a touch of primitivism (maybe a barbarism, I should say...) but has also a very paradoxal and rich capacity for expressing tenderness and humor. There are some situations and feelings that only few languages would articulate so efficiently, with such a greatness and onomatopoeic richness as the «Wiener Dialekt». As a musical piece, this sonata is dedicated to the musician who played it for the first time: António Costa. But it also comes with an implicit dedication to my very good friend and genius Austrian actor Fritz Muliar (unforgettable creator of the TV character «Brave Soldier Schweik») - a master of communicating through this Viennese dialect... Maybe it was an utopic wish, but in fact my purpose for this sonata was to be some kind of ‘Viennese Dialect", creating a symbiosis between "high culture"represented by the piano, and the roughness (touching in its particular way...) of a popular rooted language, by the horn. That is why you can recognize very often one of the most famous popular songs from the urban Viennese folklore.)
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