Saturday 20 September 1:00pm – 2:00pm
£15.00 (18 and under free)
Venue: Unitarian Chapel, YO1 8NQ

Hélène Clément viola and Katya Apekisheva piano

Hélène Clément plays on the viola that used to belong to Frank Bridge. So what could be better than to hear Bridge’s early miniatures played on his own instrument; Pensiero and Allegro Appassionat; beautiful pastoral music in the English tradition, before the slaughter of World War One changed everything for Bridge.

Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata was his last work completed only a few weeks before he died of lung caner on 9th August 1975 (he was a chain smoker all his life). The mood of the piece is not despondent – perhaps weary – and in the final notes that he was ever to write Shostakovich left us music suggesting calm acceptance of life’s last, inevitable experience. He also pays homage to Beethoven whose Moonlight Sonata pervades the long finale.

Like Frank Bridge, Rebecca Clarke was a professional violist, the first woman to make a living playing the instrument. With her Viola Sonata we return to the English pastoral world and more. Easily the most impressive and well-known of her works the sonata was written in 1918/19. The passionate three movements range across the viola’s beautiful voice. In 1939 Rebecca visited America, and was there when war was declared. She was denied a return visa, got married in New York and remained there until her death in 1979.

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