![]() The Prologue that forms the first movement is like a Bach prelude, with a turn ornament (in the score it looks like a backward S turned 90 degrees) forming the basic motive in the piano summoned by the opening chord. Motti Fang-Bentov, a Chinese-Israeli pianist now going for a graduate diploma at NEC partnered him with masterly blend. Lesser’s decades-long immersion in the sonata informed both the love and concentration that marked his performance. His (first-composed) Cello Sonata bests most other example in the repertoire…even equaling Beethoven’s several. He composed two of these, along with his 12 Études for piano and the suite for two pianos called En blanc et noir, during an astounding burst of creativity in just five months, June-October 1915, when he was desperately ill with cancer and emotionally depressed by the Great War. PIZZICATO MENU SERIESOne can’t fault the grace and refinement of this very remote-in-time music-exquisite in all respects.ĭebussy’s three completed sonatas of a projected series of Six Sonates pour divers instruments, took the stage after intermission. The evening’s handout had apparently copied the entire Apothéose listing, titles and all, from the Wikipedia article, including typos (“Correli”). 4: “The Descent of Apollo who comes to offer his violin to Lully and a place on Parnassus”). Its 12 short movements carry a descriptive program (e.g. Couperin composed this as a belated tribute to Jean-Baptiste Lully (died 1687), court composer to Louis XIV who had also been Marais’s teacher. Sarah Darling, violin, and Peter Sykes, harpsichord, completed the trio with unflagging energy.įrançois Couperin’s Apothéose de Lully added Andrea LeBlanc on a wooden-and-ivory transverse flute to the foregoing ensemble. Compare the three notes in the Carillon movement in Bizet’s l’Arlésienne or the comically famous Fandango for harpsichord by Antonio Soler. The Sonnerie is really a carillon, a three-note ostinato D-F-E forging endlessly, and only a few times shifting in key. Marais himself, judging from the string-jumping athletics of the gamba player, Adrienne Hyde, must have been a formidable virtuoso. The French Baroque began with with a Sonnerie de Sainte-Geneviève du Mont de Paris by Marin Marais (1656-1728). In the second performance, a month later in Paris, Darius Milhaud, then 24 years old, played the viola. The sizeable audience filling the downstairs and some of the balcony gave a collective hushed nod of respect as Laurence Lesser, who curates the events, spoke from the stage and mentioned that the world premiere of Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola and harp had taken place at this very location, in 1916 as an event of the Longy Club. The first of three French “First Monday” events at the New England Conservatory inked for this fall was informal, judging by general admission ($0.00) and the almost total lack of printed programs - they ran out early. ![]()
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