Biography

Matt Haimovitz is renowned as a musician who ‘never turns in a predictable performance’ (New Yorker) and who ‘brings his megawatt sound and uncommon expressive gifts to a vast variety of styles’ (New York Times). He has inspired countless listeners by bringing his artistry to concert halls, clubs, outdoor festivals, and intimate coffee houses. In addition to a busy touring schedule, he is Associate Professor of Strings at McGill University. Haimovitz made his debut in 1984 at the age of 13 as soloist with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic, and at 17 he made his first recording with the Chicago Symphony. In 2000 Haimovitz undertook a highly acclaimed Bach ‘Listening-Room Tour’, in which he played the six Bach solo cello suites in clubs across the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Multiple prize-winning Canadian pianist Meagan Milatz has performed with numerous musicians of international acclaim, including violinist Jinjoo Cho and hornist Stefan Dohr. First LMMC appearance.

Notes

Beethoven enriched the repertory for cello and piano with three sets of variations and five sonatas. Today’s recital offers an example of each. The march tune for the variations on ‘See, the conqu’ring hero comes’ is taken from Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus. Beethoven’s twelve variations on this theme were written in 1796, the fiftieth anniversary of the first performance of the oratorio. Beethoven called the first of the two sonatas Opus 102 (1815) a ‘free sonata’, for it departs radically from traditional form. It is in two balanced movements, each consisting of a slow and a fast section. This sonata looks forward to Beethoven’s late stylistic period whose music is filled with dense counterpoint, trills and other ornamental devices, syncopation, frequent and abrupt contrasts of pitch, and bold harmonic progressions.

In 1915 Debussy embarked on a project to compose six sonatas, each for a different combination of instruments (only three were written). The first of these was the Cello Sonata. On the title page of the original published edition appear the words ‘Claude Debussy, Musicien français’, no doubt a pointed indication that his sonatas were not going to be cast in the time-honored mold of the German masters, but would follow a different path. It is more the classical spirit Debussy is invoking, not its organizational procedures.

Poulenc’s close friend, the baritone Pierre Bernac, described him as ‘a mixture of gaiety and melancholy, profundity and futility, triviality and nobility’, all qualities that pretty much sum up the Cello Sonata (1948) as well. This is Poulenc’s only chamber work in four movements, most of the others being in three.

Robert Markow