The Pharos Arts Foundation continues its Concert and Recital Series with a violin and piano recital with two very special artists.

The youngest winner of the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Masters Competition in Tel Aviv at the age of 19, in 1989, pianist Ian Fountain has enjoyed a wide-ranging and varied career, performing extensively throughout Europe, the USA, the UK and the Far East with the world’s most renowned orchestras, including the London Symphony and Sir Colin Davis, the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta, and the Czech Philharmonic and Jiri Belohlavek. As a recitalist, Ian Fountain has performed in New York, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Jerusalem, amongst others. He is a regular guest of international festivals such as Prague Spring, Berlin, Schleswig-Holstein, Enescu (Bucharest) and Kuhmo. He has performed an extensive repertoire of over 60 concertos, including the complete cycle of Mozart Concertos. As a chamber musician, he enjoys many long-standing collaborations with musicians! such as David Geringas, Ulf Hoelscher, and the Mandelring and Emperor quartets, performing in concerts and festivals throughout Europe, Japan and Korea, and in recent years, he has repeatedly appeared as a conductor.

Ian Fountain will join forces with violinist Erika Geldsetzer, who, besides being the founder of the celebrated Fauré Quartett, has appeared as a soloist with famous orchestras in all major concert halls around the globe. Along with the more well-known violin concertos – like Sibelius, Mendelssohn and Mozart – Erika enjoys performing the lesser known masterpieces of the repertoire, including the violin concertos of Richard Strauss, Wolfgang Erich Korngold and Edward Elgar. With the Fauré Quartett, she has appeared in venues such as the Wigmore Hall in London, Philharmonie and Konzerthaus Berlin, Lincoln Center in New York, Teatro Colon in Bue! nos Aires, Izumi Hall in Osaka, Alte Oper in Frankfurt and Snape Maltings Concert Hall in Aldeburgh. The Fauré Quartett has also recorded major works of the piano quartet literature – such as quartets by Mozart, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Fauré, Dvorák and Schumann – for Deutsche Grammophon, it has won two Echo Klassik awards, and it has recently released a CD with works by Richard Strauss and Mahler for Sony Classics.

For their recital in Cyprus, on Thursday 26 February 2015 at The Shoe Factory, the Duo will perform sonatas by Beethoven, Elgar and Richard Strauss.

THE PROGRAMME:
Beethoven: Sonata in A major, Op.12, No.2
Elgar: Sonata in E minor, Op.82
interval
R. Strauss: Sonata in E-flat major, Op.18

Beethoven’s A major Sonata, Op.12, No.2 is among the least frequently performed of his ten sonatas for violin and piano. He composed the three sonatas of Op.12 between 1797 and 1799. Thus they are products of the high classic era, rather than the early romantic period. In fact, eight of Beethoven’s ten violin sonatas were composed by 1802, preceding his so-called ‘heroic decade.’ More 18th-century galant style than heroic or dramatic, the A major sonata is full of charm. Elgar’s Violin Sonata in E minor was composed between 1918-19, concurrently with this cello concerto, the string quartet and the piano quintet. The composer had been greatly depress! ed by the outbreak of the First World War and these compositions are markedly different from much of his earlier output, less self-confident and more contemplative. Shortly after this burst of composition, Lady Elgar, his helpmate and constant companion, died and with her, his inspiration. Although he lived for another 14 years, he composed hardly anything and certainly nothing to compare with these last masterpieces. Written in 1887-88, Richard Strauss’s Sonata in E-flat major is roughly contemporaneous with the famous symphonic fantasy Aus Italien and the famous tone poem Don Juan, and the proximity is everywhere apparent in the music. The Sonata is considered the last of Strauss’ works to adhere to classical forms At the time of writing the piece, he was in love with the soprano Pauline de Ahna, and the work exudes a youthful, optimistic exuberance and an undercurrent of sweetness that pervades even the bold virtuoso writing.