Gautier Capuçon / Mirabelle Kajenjeri

The evening at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, part of the Chamber Music Season of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, offers the opportunity to listen to two exceptional musicians: Gautier Capuçon, among the most sought-after cellists internationally, together with the young and already established pianist Mirabelle Kajenjeri.

The two musicians tackle four masterpieces by great composers: Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, Mendelssohn's Sonata for Cello No. 2, Op. 58, Schumann's Fantasiestücke, Op. 73, and Brahms's Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 2, Op. 99.

Claude Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, composed in 1915, is a small masterpiece of early twentieth-century French music, famous for its brevity, intense expressiveness, and innovative use of instrumental timbres; like most of Debussy's compositions, it is characterized by dreamlike atmospheres.

Composed in 1843 and published that same year, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's Cello Sonata No. 2, Op. 58, was dedicated to Count Matvei Vielgorsky, a Russian cellist and patron of the arts. The composition is divided into four movements, a unique example of Mendelssohn's sonata production, and is a piece brimming with romantic tension.

The Fantasiestücke for clarinet and piano, Op. 73, written in 1849 by Robert Schumann and originally intended for clarinet and piano, with their touch of introspective poetry, have a title that underscores the quintessential Romantic notion that creative expression is the product of the artist's imagination.

Finally, the Cello Sonata No. 2, Op. 99, is Johannes Brahms's second and final sonata for cello and piano. Composed in 1886, it was first performed in Vienna that same year by cellist Robert Hausmann, to whom the piece was dedicated, with the composer himself at the piano. The Sonata closes the concert with its powerful and intensely lyrical architecture.

National Academy of Santa Cecilia - Chamber Music Season - Auditorium Parco della Musica - Rome.

Debussy: Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor
Mendelssohn: Sonata for Cello No. 2, Op. 58
Schumann: Fantasiestücke, Op. 73
Brahms: Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 2, Op. 99

Cello Gautier Capuçon
Piano Mirabelle Kajenjeri

Photo: the Auditorium Parco della Musica official site