It is always a pleasure to welcome Leon McCawley back to Luton Music. We have enjoyed remarkable recitals from him over the last five years and this programme of Romantic piano music promises to be another such memorable occasion.
Although Schumann’s 2nd Piano Sonata is essentially musical in its discourse, it does have a resonance with our season’s theme of The Relationship between Literature, Art & Music in that the slow movement is based on a setting that Schumann had made of a poem by Justinus Kerner – Im Herbste.
Be off with you, O sun,
Hurry away from here!
So that she might be warmed
By only me!
Wither, flowers, O wither!
Hush now, little birds!
That only I might sing to her
And bloom in doing so.
Woven into the poetically inspired melodic invention of this movement (and indeed in many other places in the work) is the composer’s motto theme for his beloved wife Clara. She was his greatest muse and this is another of his works that bears testimony to his unswerving devotion to her.
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Richard Sisson (Chair of Luton Music)
- Programme
Ludwig van Beethoven – Sonata in A major Op 2 No.2
Sergei Rachmaninov – Étude-tableau in A minor Op 39 No.2
Johann Sebastian Bach arr. Liszt – Organ Prelude and Fugue in A minor BWV543INTERVAL
Felix Mendelssohn – Rondo capriccioso Op 14
Felix Mendelssohn – Six Songs Without Words Op 19b
Robert Schumann – Sonata No.2 in G minor Op 22Click here for directions to venue