Biography

Canadian violinist Kerson Leong is quickly emerging as one of the finest musicians and instrumentalists of his generation, demonstrated by his ability to combine an intellectual approach with raw intensity and spontaneity. A natural communicator on and off the stage, his passions include music outreach and pedagogy. Indiana University and the Sibelius Academy, among other institutions, have invited him to teach or lecture. Leong is an associated artist of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium. For the 2018/2019 season, he was Artist-in-Residence with Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain. He performs on the “ex Bohrer” Guarneri del Gesù violin. American pianist Larry Weng has won prizes at the 2016 Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition for Young Musicians, among many others. In 2019 he received his Doctorate of Musical Arts from Yale University, where he studied with Boris Berman. LMMC debut.

https://kersonleong.com/

Notes

Gabriel Fauré was basically a lyricist who excelled in small, intimate forms of music: piano pieces, chamber music, works for small chorus, and especially songs. The sonata we hear this afternoon, lasting nearly half an hour, is actually one of his largest pieces. Fauré himself said that his music exemplified “the eminently French qualities of taste, clarity, and sense of proportion”. He hoped to express “the taste for clear thought, purity of form and sobriety”. To these qualities we might add meticulous workmanship, elegance, and refinement, for in all these respects his Violin Sonata No. 1 (1876) certainly conforms.

“An astonishing bundle of contradictions unified by a highly personal approach to music” is Edward Downes” apt summary of the life and art of Francis Poulenc. This “astonishing bundle of contradictions” surfaces in many works, including the Violin Sonata (1943). This quality is especially prominent in its final movement, where we find music hall tunes side by side with serious material.

Few of the truly gifted composers died as young as Guillaume Lekeu, born in Belgium but a resident of France from the age of nine. This “Rimbaud of music” as he has been called, succumbed to typhoid fever the day after his 24th birthday, yet managed to produce in his few short years a considerable catalogue of works (many left incomplete), of which the Violin Sonata of 1892 is the best known, championed by the likes of Eugène Ysaÿe, Arthur Grumiaux and Yehudi Menuhin. An intensely lyrical quality pervades the sonata, while its chromatic harmonic language bespeaks that of a Wagnerian acolyte. This work is notable also for the prominence of the piano writing.

Robert Markow