Galant+Romantic music for cello and harp

Details

Duo Remanence full profile / Cello-harp / 2 musicians

Full program notes

Duo Remanence presents a program of galant and Romantic music for cello and harp, spanning three centuries of music written by composers from across Europe. The journey begins in Italy with sonatas by Antonio Vivaldi and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, with the late-Renaissance “Spagnoletta” in between. Nocturns by Friedrich Burgmüller and an étude by the harpist François-Joseph Dizi evoke the tender melancholy of early Romanticism, followed by Johannes Brahms’s folksy, rollicking Hungarian Dance no. 5. “Liebestraum” (“Dream of Love”) by Franz Liszt is a sublime tribute to the power of love, succeeded by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s wistful “Sentimental Waltz.” “Lochaber” is the name of a region in the Scottish Highlands, and it’s also a traditional Scottish tune arranged by the Italian Francesco Barsanti (1690–1775) who traveled throughout the United Kingdom collecting folk songs. The program finishes with “The Swan” by Camille Saint-Saëns. In mythology swans are believed to sing just before their death, but here this swan song is merely a final piece before the end of the concert, nevertheless full of bittersweet emotion as we end our musical journey for the time being.