Music Chamber

Johannes Brahms               Sonata for cello and piano No 1 in E minor, Op 38

(1833-1897)                         Allegro non troppo ~ Allegro quasi Minuetto ~ Allegro – piú Presto

 

Johann Sebastian Bach      Partita II, BWV 826

(1685-1750)                        Sinfonia ~ Allemande ~ Courante ~ Sarabande ~ Rondeaux ~ Capriccio

 

Camille Saint-Saëns            Sonata for bassoon and piano in G major, Op 168

(1835-1921)                        Allegro Moderato ~ Allegro Scherzando ~ Molto Adagio ~ Allegro Moderato

 

 

Since completing a Master Degree in Advanced Performance Studies at the Royal College of Music in 2006, Susana Dias has freelanced with many UK based Orchestras including the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Southbank Sinfonia, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Ireland. Born in Oporto, Portugal, Susana attended the Music Conservatoire in the class of Robert Glassburner. In London at the RCM she studied Bassoon with Andrea De Flammineis and Contrabassoon with Martin Field. Susana was co-winner of the Yamaha Music Foundation Competition for Woodwinds, as well as the RCM Concerto Competition in 2005 leading to the performance of Mozart’s Bassoon concerto in the Mozart’s 250th Anniversary celebrations at LSO St. Luke’s. Susana is also a chamber musician. She is a member of The London Myriad Ensemble, a guest Bassoonist with Ensemble 360.

 

Hana Fiserova was born in the Czech Republic and studied piano at the Music Conservatoire in Brno with MgA. Jiří Peša. She also did her Degree in Piano & Music Education at the Masaryk University in Brno. During her studies Hana started gaining experience both as a piano teacher and as an accompanist. She played in a piano duet with Radka Šperková at the Conservatoire and accompanied various other musicians enjoying a busy accompanist schedule particularly with singers for national competitions. In Brno Hana also developed an interest in conducting and leading choirs, which she experienced at the Music School in Letovice and in the national church choir Effatha. At present she is developing her skills by taking conducting lessons with Christopher Gayford in London. Since finishing her studies Hana moved to London where she currently gives private piano tuition and teaches at the Da Capo Music Foundation.

 

Brahm’s Sonata presents both a progressive and elegaic face. He composed three movements in 1862, dedicating them to his friend and patron in Vienna, Joseph Gänsbacher, a singing teacher and cellist and a man instrumental in Brahms' appointment as director of the civic choir. Brahms rejected the Adagio he composed at this time (he may not have destroyed it, but rather recycled it in the Second Cello Sonata decades later), and added a fugal third movement to the first two in 1865. The resulting sonata is sonorous and playful, progressive, and deeply rooted in the music of history. The opening movement follows a mostly conventional sonata form. The principal theme darkly inhabits the resonant lower tones and has been characterized as reminiscent of otherworldly fairy tales. Both Brahms' treatment of the principal thematic expositions and their later development frequently show his expansiveness of melodic vision, while maintaining both a close (though unhurried) adherence to the traditional form and a specific tie to the past: a thematic correspondence to the third Contrapunctus from J.S. Bach's Art of the Fugue. The middle movement shifts key to A minor and presents an almost Baroque minuet and trio. (Almost, because within the rigid refrain form Brahms allows the performers to harmonically meander a bit, and the trio involves a rather lavish expansion of the introductory four-note motive.) The final movement brings the tension between past and future into the sharpest relief: Brahms composes a fugue for the two instruments. A fugue was a markedly historical form for his generation, but the harmonic character and the distinct difficulty of balancing the cello/bassoon's single line against three "voices" in the keyboard were all new.

 

In the last year of his life, at the age of 85, Camille Saint-Saëns was still active as a composer and conductor, traveling between Algiers and Paris. Besides a final piano album leaf, his last completed works were three sonatas, one each for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon. He sensed that he did not have much time left; he wrote to a friend, "I am using my last energies to add to the repertoire for these otherwise neglected instruments." He intended to write sonatas for another three wind instruments, but was never able to. English composers, such as Holst and Bax, and other French composers, such as Honegger and Milhaud, were also starting to expand the literature for woodwind instruments around the same time. In fact, Saint-Saëns' sonatas have pastoral and humorous moments that are similar to those others' works, relying on simpler melodies and textures than are found even his earlier chamber works, yet retaining Classical forms for their structure. The opening is liltingly charming as it drifts between major and minor, building to a not too dramatic climax in its development section. The final Adagio features a florid melody over a simple, essentially chordal accompaniment leading to a cadenza-like Allegro.