Belgian composer Joseph Jongen was a prodigy, taking to composition early in life, but most of his works have fallen into obscurity since his death in 1953. The works that are performed today are mainly his organ works - either for solo organ, or the occasional performance of his works for organ & orchestra. During his life, however, Jongen showed a mastery of chamber and solo music for strings, such as the Introduction and Dance, Op. 102, for viola & piano that we look at today.

The lyrical qualities of the viola are on full display as the one movement work opens with a slow introduction. Jongen provides a moving line in the viola, with a long note followed by quick turns, over a steady pace of chords in the piano. Harmonically, Jongen shows the bridge between late romanticism and the influences of jazz on composers of the early 20th century.

As the viola continues to work through this initial idea of longer notes alternating with turns, runs, and arpeggiations, the harmonies continue to develop. While the harmonies are indicative of the jazz era, the melodic lines in the viola harken to the french impressionistic composers.

After a quick crescendo, with the viola moving to continuous runs, we move to a new tempo and style in the dance, as proceeded by a series of double stops in the viola. The piano begins with a completely new syncopated dance rhythm for two bars, before being joined by the viola with a new theme played spiccato with double stops. As this theme develops, Jongen moves the piano from the initial dance rhythm to an arpeggiated chord structure in triplets, playing against the eighth and sixteenth rhythms in the viola, giving us an interesting combination of duplets and triplets that is passed back and forth between the instruments.

A short interlude of murmuring eighths in the piano contrasting with arpeggiated triplets in the viola takes us back to references of the original introduction theme before another series of double stops in the viola builds to a challenging passage of octaves descending chromatically from the very high end of the viola's range, slowly calming to harmonics that set up the return of the dance rhythm in the piano, then a new short theme in a scherzando section.

After bringing back more challenging octave double stops - this time in a duple rhythm over triplets in the piano - Jongen starts to mix meters between 3/8 and 4/8 with the melodic material of the dance theme, building to a loud fortissimo, which suddenly devolves to a short fragment of the dance melody being traded between the instruments, concluding with an arpeggiation in the viola running from the bottom of the range to the top of the range with an harmonic last note.

The recording featured in the video above appears to be the only commercial recording of this work, with a wonderful performance by Nathan Braude. The recording is part of a full album of Jongen's works for viola.