I remember reading William S. Newman's Sonata Since Beethoven and being intrigued by his description of Rudolf Viole's piano sonatas, as described by others though, since they were, well- lost.
Or so Mr. Newman had every reason to believe, it seems. Apparently matters have changed, and his piano music, including his sonatas, have been rediscovered. There's 3 volumes' worth of recordings now, thanks to John Kersey and the efforts of scholars in England and Switzerland it seems?
See here (http://rdrecs.wordpress.com/2009/12/26/rudolf-viole-1825-67-the-piano-sonatas-vol-1/) for a description of volume 1 of the series. Linked from there, too, is a mention of the same pianist's recording of piano music by Salomon Jadassohn (another favorite of sorts of mine.)
I haven't heard these recordings of Viole's sonatas (anyone?...) - but was about to ask if anyone even knew if his sonatas had been found, when it occurred to me to take a quick look- and - well- there it (they) are. Yay search engines... I have to catch a bus (to visit family for a week) in under an hour, so can't even listen to sound samples right now rationally anyway (will later), but wanted to mention. (A search of this forum turns up nothing for "Viole", so unless someone misspelled his name as "Viola" when announcing the release of this recording - shame! - or unless it was announced on the old boards in 2009 - quite possible ... well...erm.)
Anyway, again, Newman's 2nd or 3rd or whatever hand opinion- maybe from music examples from NMZ reviews (back when it was more common for music reviews to contain analysis and music examples - there's a habit worth encouraging again...) - was that they looked intriguing, if, like Draeseke's sonata in his opinion, possibly somewhat indebted to Liszt's sonata (there are, this writer honestly suggests, far worse take-off points, and originality for its own sake is... erm. A whole slew of topics right there, so never mind.) Glad to see the works still exist, again, hoping to hear them one way or the other. :)
After listening to the first sonata with score, I still find it hard to grasp structurally. It's not a clearly defined double-function large scale sonata movement like the Liszt sonata, but more like a variations on the motto theme, with transitional parts including transformation of the secondary theme.
There's no traditional concentrated exposition and recapitulation of two or three thematic groups, and the only extended passage get a literal repeat is from the last row of page 9 in the score to page 12, before the brief Cantabile religioso that is not really a full-fledged slow section but more transitional. The repeat is from page 28, starting at the return to the home key, b-flat minor, to 8 bars before the whole sonata ends. But these doesn't seem to be main theme areas......