Le violoncelle français – Semaine française I
Sol Gabetta & Bertrand Chamayou

GALA Chamber Music

Thursday, 25 July 2019
7.30 pm, Saanen Church

Polish or French? Everyone claims Frédéric Chopin’s legacy. Yet the musician would probably not have become the genius he was without the double influence of his Polish homeland and the Parisian salons.

With his Cello Sonata dedicated to virtuoso musician Auguste-Joseph Franchomme, he composed one of his rare non-piano works. A work ideally coupled to the sonatas of Debussy and Poulenc, which each bring us forward by a half-century, approximately, and in turn confront us to the evidence of their genius. Take Poulenc for instance, who claimed high and loud his lack of ease with string instruments, and yet who offered Pierre Fournier, in 1948, on the most exhilarating sonatas ever written for the cello.