FRANCESCO DILLON – EMANUELE TORQUATI

This program, featuring cellist Francesco Dillon and pianist Emanuele Torquati, was performed during the 2019-2020 Micat In Vertice season. It begins and ends with Beethoven, whose compositions frame the performance with two sonatas for cello and piano, n. 1 op. 102 and n. 3 op. 69. In fact, in January 2020, this concert was the first of a series of concerts planned in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven for a year’s worth of festivities. Between the bookends of Beethoven, two more modern figures, Kate Moore and Claude Debussy, emerge with changing colors, presenting pieces that are set closer to the sensibility and sensoriality of today’s listener.

The fourth and fifth Sonatas for cello and piano, written in 1815, and published together two years later as a single piece, op. 102, represent Beethoven’s farewell to the genre. Most likely, they were conceived for the cellist Joseph Lincke, who served the Countess Marie Erdödy. The Countess was almost the same age as Beethoven, and was a confidant of the composer. The work is dedicated to her. Beethoven’s last two sonatas are the first fruits of research that had been driving him for some time. Aside from being interested in the technique of the instrument, he tended to investigate compositional techniques of the past in order to unite the polyphony of the Baroque in a single solution with the dialectic of the classical sonata-form. Divided into two main, fast movements introduced by two slower movements, Andante and Adagio, the sonata alternates polyphonic interweaving and dotted rhythms, melodic elaboration, and brilliant irony.

Velvet, a 2009 piece by the Australian-Dutch cellist, sound artist, visual artist, and composer, Kate Moore, is inspired by the representation of fabric in Renaissance paintings. Movement, vitality and earthiness are captured and distilled into the frame and stillness of the painting. The shades of light and dark are emphasized by the lines and folds in which the light of the sun reflects its contours. The composer, in fact, lets herself be inspired by organic figures and sounds present in nature, and by objects scattered in the biosphere, both visual and auditory, in a creative synaesthesia of perceptions.

A little over twenty years after his most famous chamber opera, for string quartet, Debussy wrote a group of compositions for various instruments: Les Six Sonates pour divers instruments sont offerts en hommage a Emma. Son mari – Claude Debussy [The Six Sonatas for various instruments are offered in homage to Emma. Her husband – Claude Debussy]. In fact, he only had time to complete three of them, including the Sonata for cello and piano, composed in the summer of 1915. The piece is enveloped in a nocturnal atmosphere that goes beyond the boundaries of the central Sérénade, in which the melancholy, melodic profile of the cello is accompanied on the piano in a dry, guitar-like style. The Prologue, with a lively tone, focuses on the bowed instrument, which leads the musical narrative by exposing itself on timbre and virtuosity. The beginning of the Finale is animated, light, and nervous, the same character that leads into the last few chords after a slow and meditative central episode.

Beethoven writes the third sonata op. 69 at the same time as the Fifth Symphony in C minor; and, unlike the fragmentary character of the theme of the famous symphony, the sonata opens with a melodic theme on the cello solo, a prelude to the melancholy of its development. The Scherzo, alternating with the Trio, is animated by a syncopated melody, where every two bars are in contrast with the accompaniment. In this central movement, Beethoven tries to place both instruments in an equal position, so that one does not prevail over the other, despite their different roles. The result delivers characteristics that will be used as a model by both Mendelssohn and Brahms. The Adagio opening the last movement is so vast that it instilled doubt in critics that it was not an autonomous movement detached from the final Allegro and coming to a close with a magnificent coda.

Anna Passarini
English translation by Samantha Stout

Download the program (in Italian)