Critically acclaimed piano and cello duo with New Zealand-born pianist Kathryn Mosley and British cellist Joseph Spooner.
“Hearing the fine duo of cellist Joseph Spooner and pianist Kathryn Mosley playing Walter Macfarren, Roger Quilter and Rebecca Clarke …made a perfect early-evening prelude…” The Strad.
Kathryn and Joseph met while studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London; they have both performed internationally, and appeared together in the United Kingdom, France, Denmark and Russia. The duo has a broad repertoire, of the familiar, the contemporary, and the unfamiliar. A particular specialism has been research into English and New Zealand repertoire of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This has entailed performances of works by Hugo Anson (teacher of Douglas Lilburn), William Lloyd Webber, Bridge, Bainton and Alwyn; first modern performances of the cello sonatas by Walter Macfarren and George Dyson; the London premiere of Granville Bantock’s Sonata no. 2; and the British and French premieres of the Sonata no. 2 by Arnold Trowell.
Programme One: Katherine Mansfield and her music
An exploration of music with which the great New Zealand author was intimately linked.
Trowell, the New Zealand virtuoso cellist who was based in London in adulthood, was Mansfield’s cello teacher and the object of her affections for a long period. He however did not reciprocate her feelings. This concert includes a work by Trowell dedicated to Mansfield, as well as one by him we know she admired greatly, and his effusive second sonata. The modernism of Anson and Keay – the former another New Zealander in London and teacher of Douglas Lilburn, the latter a compatriot in Paris – acts as a foil to the Late Romanticism of Trowell. The programme also features classics of the cello and piano repertoire that Mansfield loved and which informed her.
ARNOLD TROWELL (1887–1966)
Sérénade (op. 20 no. 3)
Rêverie du Soir (op. 12 no. 1)
HUGO ANSON (1894–1958) Two Poems (publ. 1925)
‘Rawhiti: A Song of the Sun’
‘Nga Patu-Paiarehe’
FREDERIC CHOPIN (1810-1849)
Sonata for Cello and Piano (op. 65, 1845-46)
Allegro Moderato; Scherzo; Largo; Finale: Allegro
INTERVAL
CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918) Sonata (1915)
Prologue – Sérénade – Finale
NIGEL KEAY (b.1955) Prelude (2014)
ARNOLD TROWELL (1887–1966) Sonata no. 2 (op. 30, 1915)
Allegro con spirito – Andante quasi Adagio – Allegro
Programme Two: English Classics in New Zealand
An exploration of neglected treasures of the English Romantic tradition.
The rediscovery of Walter Macfarren’s cello sonata set Kathryn and Joseph on a journey through the English cello and piano repertoire. Since recording the work, they have together championed late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century English music, as well as contemporary repertoire. Bainton, a mainstay of the English choral tradition, is also known for his work later in life as Director of the Sydney Conservatoire. His brief but intense sonata here balances Bridge’s great work for the medium, so affected by the Great War. Kathryn and Joseph have worked closely in London with both Wallen and Taylor.
WALTER MACFARREN (1826–1905) Sonata (premiered 1861)
Allegro appassionato; Allegretto giojoso;
Adagio, più tosto recitativo – Allegro giojoso
ERROLLYN WALLEN (b. 1958) Dervish (2001)
EDGAR BAINTON (1880–1956) Sonata (1924)
Allegro moderato; Allegretto; Lento; Allegro Molto
INTERVAL
ERNEST MOERAN (1894-1950) Prelude (1943)
WILLIAM ALWYN (1905–1985) Two Folk Songs
(1929, dedicated to Douglas Cameron)
‘Meditation on a Norwegian Folk-Song Fragment’
‘Who’ll Buy My Besoms? Irish Folk Tune’
FRANK BRIDGE (1879–1941) Sonata (1914/1917)
Allegro ben moderato
Adagio ma non troppo – Molto allegro e agitato – Tempo primo – Allegro moderato