Adrian Brendel (Cello) with Alasdair Beatson (Piano)
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Saturday 17 July, St Mary’s Church 7.30pm – 9.30pm Adrian Brendel (cello) with Alasdair Beatson (piano) Cello Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 109 Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) 1 Allegro 2 Andante 3 Finale: Allegro comodo Had Gabriel Fauré ventured more towards larger and more dramatic forms, his achievements nearly a century after his death might be more widely acknowledged. With few exceptions he tended to express himself through song, instrumental and chamber music, and consequently his understated idiom, ‘power without violence’, never won for him the recognition he deserved. Despite failing health, his last years were crowned by an Indian summer and from 1917, the year of his First Cello Sonata, he produced a handful of chamber works regarded by many as mini masterpieces. Of their craftmanship the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger declared ‘I know of no other music which is more purely and uniquely music except, perhaps, that of Mozart or Schubert’. Of course, the style of this sonata is very much Fauré ‘s own, its unsettled character a product of wartime stresses that seep into the thorny restlessness and urgent outpourings of the first movement. While its terse main theme is tempered by a more comforting lyrical second, disquiet is never far from the surface. A searching quality pervades the Andante, yet no answers are gained from its austere beauty which carries faint echoes of his Requiem. By contrast, the Finale seems to smile, its relaxed mood appearing to look beyond earlier concerns and conveying a note of cautious optimism. Cello Sonata, Op.143 Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) 1 Allegro: Tempo di marcia 2 Cavatina 3 Ballabile 4 Finale Contemporary with Fauré’s late sonata was Francis Poulenc’s first published composition, the Rapsodie nègre which won for him fashionable notoriety as an enfant terrible and membership of the radical group Les Six. By 1924 his ballet Les biches had confirmed Poulenc as a strikingly individual musical personality, whose insouciance and anarchic persuasion prompted Claude Rostand to describe him as ‘half monk, half hooligan’. More at home with wind sonorities, Poulenc threw his only string quartet into the Paris sewers. But despite his belief that ‘nothing is further from the human voice than a bowing stroke’, he contributed both a violin and cello sonata to the instrumental repertoire. This last was completed in 1948 and dedicated to the distinguished cellist Pierre Fournier. It is cast in four sections each with a three-part design and contrasting central panel. The opening movement juxtaposes a tongue-in-cheek march with a languorous central episode. Hesitant, chorale-like chords set in motion an exquisite ‘Cavatine’, a songlike movement of passionate expression culminating in tender intimacies, swept aside by the ballroom gaiety of the ‘Ballabile’. Declamatory gestures, animated piano and cello exchanges and gentle musing passage all find a place in this diverting Finale, and the work concludes in a dramatic flourish. Fünf Stücke im Volkston, Op.102 (Five Pieces in Folk Style) Robert Schumann (1810-1856) 1 Vanitas vanitatum, Mit humor (Vanity of vanities, with humour) 2 Langsam (slow) 3 Nicht schnell, mit viel Ton zu spielen (not quick and to be played with feeling) 4 Nicht so rasch (not too fast) 5 Stark und markiert (strong and emphatic) Schumann’s wife Clara expressed delight in the ‘freshness and originality’ of these Fünf Stücke when they were first played at the home of friends in Dresden on the composer’s 40th birthday. Charming and atmospheric mood portraits, several display an elegant yet rustic simplicity. In their juxtaposition of humour and tenderness, the presence of Schumann’s alter-ego Florestan and Eusebius (twin sides of his musical personality) might be imagined. Rhythmic games feature in the witty first piece, its title inspired by Goethe’s poem ‘Vanitas! Vanitatum Vanitas!’ The second is an affectionate lullaby and the meditative third offers some rhythmic surprises counter to its melting lyricism. A plainspoken fourth encompasses a dreamlike central panel, while the restless fifth, with its striking leaps for the cello, eventually reaches a triumphant close. Sonata in A major, Op. 69 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) 1 Allegro ma non tanto 2 Scherzo: Allegro molto 3 Adagio cantabile – Allegro vivace Beethoven’s five Cello Sonatas are regarded as gems of the repertoire, their composition spanning nearly twenty years from 1796 to 1815. The third of these works, in A major, is a solitary work begun in 1807 during the period of the Fifth Symphony and is dedicated to the amateur cellist Baron Ignaz von Gleichenstein, Imperial Court Councillor in Vienna. The Sonata’s first movement opens with an eloquent theme announced by the cello alone, its initial contours soon reprised by the piano. An assertive transition yields to a secondary idea comprising a rising scale passage given out by the cello against a softly descending arpeggio figure on the piano, ideas that are subsequently reversed. Following some animated exploration of the unassuming first theme, the opening paragraph with accumulating interest in the alteration of its themes, a grand, unison restatement of the opening phrase heralding the final furlong. One of Beethoven’s favourite rhythmic games launches the lively ‘Scherzo’; the pianist’s left hand chasing the right hand. These high spirits subside briefly for a lilting secondary idea heard on the cello, but it is the piano that dominates proceedings and provides much of the humour. No contrast could be more pronounced than the arrival of the sublime, but brief ‘Adagio’, its eighteen bars suffused with a cloudless serenity. Its dreaming leads directly to a buoyant finale where Beethoven extends the cello’s range, frequently taking the instrument into the treble clef, and demanding no small degree of virtuosity. Generously sponsored by James & Clare Kirkman, Kees & Diana van der Klugt and Neathercoat Financial Planning David Truslove, 2021 .