Bacewicz was a Polish virtuoso violinist and a leading composer. Like many composers from the past she wrote works she could play herself, both concertos and sonatas. She lived through both World Wars and the many restrictions imposed by Stalinist Russia and the Nazis. Her
Sonata da camera is remarkably cheerful given the conditions in Warsaw in 1945, she may have chosen to write a faux-Baroque work as a way of retreating from the present. Schumann’s intensity comes as quite a shock after such a positive start. Schumann wrote three violin sonatas and Ibragimova and Tiberghien will play them all for us over two concerts before moving on to his final piano trio. This sonata balances the passionate declamation of the outer movements with a magical slow movement based on an old German chorale, the melody picked out by the piano softly supported by the pizzicato violin. Sean Shepherd is a New York composer, his new Quartet was recently premiered by the Pacifica in Utah and Toronto. Pacifica begin our journey through Mozart’s six quartets dedicated to his friend and mentor Joseph Haydn (Six for Papa Haydn) with the so-called
Dissonance Quartet with its mysterious opening that so upset his contemporaries.
