Event 1: Steven Isserlis and Friends

Thursday 20th September | 7.30pm 
Event 1: Steven Isserlis and Friends
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York
£15.00 (£5 Full Time Students, £1.00 Under 18)

Anthony Marwood, Irene Duval violins, Eivind Ringstad viola                                                
Steven Isserlis cello, Ian Brown piano

Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897)
Scherzo from the Sonatensatz in C minor, Op. posth., ‘F-A-E Sonata’
Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856) Violin Concerto, 2nd movement (arr. Isserlis for piano trio)
Gabriel Fauré (1845 – 1924)  String Quartet in E minor, op121
Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992) Vocalise Etude No.151 - Voix Élevées (High Voice)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)  Sonata in A Major for Cello and Piano Op. 69

Steven Isserlis and Friends have put together a mouth-watering concert of rarities and more familiar music. The first two items arise from the friendship that blossomed briefly between the young Brahms and Robert and Clara Schumann. Brahms’ Scherzo was part of a birthday present to violinist Joseph Joachim, a collective sonata concocted by Schumann.

The stand-alone slow movement of Schumann’s violin concerto was revived by Benjamin Britten who wrote a small codetta into the piece and made it into an ‘Elegy’ to commemorate the English horn player Dennis Brain who died in a car crash. It was unearthed by Steven Isserlis in the Britten-Pears archives and made by Steven into this piano trio version.

Fauré’s last composition – his only string quartet - is an achingly beautiful reflection on his life, despite being deaf. Steven Isserlis and Ian Brown play a beautiful ‘high voice’ study by Messiaen in which the cello sings. It sings again in Beethoven’s melodic third cello sonata in which the sonority of the instrument take the ‘cello sonata’ light years on from its few eighteenth century antecedents.

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