In This Program
The Concert
Sunday, June 1, 2025, at 7:30pm
Sheku Kanneh-Mason cello
Isata Kanneh-Mason piano
Felix Mendelssohn
Cello Sonata No. 1 in B-flat major, Opus 45 (1838)
Allegro vivace
Andante
Allegro assai
Gabriel Fauré
Cello Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Opus 109 (1917)
Allegro
Andante
Finale: Allegro commodo
Intermission
Natalie Klouda
Tor Mordôn (2024)
Flowing and expressive
Con fuoco
Francis Poulenc
Cello Sonata (1948)
Allegro–Tempo di Marcia
Cavatine
Ballabile
Finale
Presenting Sponsor of the Great Performers Series
This concert is sponsored by Rachel B. Wagman, MD.
Program Notes
Cello Sonata No. 1 in B-flat major, Opus 45
Felix Mendelssohn
Born: February 3, 1809, in Hamburg
Died: November 4, 1847, in Leipzig
Work Composed: 1838
When, in 1829, Felix Mendelssohn came to write his first composition for cello and piano—the Variations Concertantes in D major, Opus 17—he dedicated it to his younger brother Paul, an adept cellist though one who never aspired to be a professional musician. During working hours, Paul followed in his father’s steps as a financier, mastering the craft of commerce through studies in Paris and London before becoming a partner at the family’s private bank. That early set of variations would be followed by Felix’s two sonatas for the same pair of instruments, the first in 1838, the second in 1841–43. On November 30, 1838, a year before he finished the First Sonata, he had written to Paul, “I will soon make for you a Sonata for Cello and Piano.” Even if Paul was not a cellist for the recital stage, he and Felix must have played these pieces en famille. That’s easy to imagine with the First Sonata; while the monumental Second Sonata has “concert hall” written all over it, the chamber-scaled First comes across as a more intimate work.
The first and last of the three movements both display the energetic geniality that is one of the composer’s hallmarks. The first movement, a sonata-form Allegro vivace, is a propulsive piece, all the more so when its rhythms break into tumbling triplets; and its second theme projects irresistible ebullience. The third movement is a freely plotted rondo. Mendelssohn’s marking of Allegro assai seems hardly appropriate at its relaxed opening. But that principal, song-like theme is written in rather long note values, and soon enough the music breaks into faster figuration (assai animato) that would leave the players scrambling if they were over-ambitious with their tempo at the opening.
Delightful as the outer movements are, this sonata’s most memorable expanse is the second movement (Andante), in which Mendelssohn disguises himself as his friend Robert Schumann. Its G-minor opening is ever so Schumannesque, an exercise in pretend-spooky musical story-telling, as if recounted to rapt circle of enchanted youngsters. A central section, in the major mode, is more like a lullaby. We are set up to expect a simple A-B-A structure, and so it is. Still, when the A-section returns, Mendelssohn brings it back as a variation on the opening music, with the piano’s hiccoughing grace-notes again recalling Schumann and some fleet passages in 32nd notes injecting a Hungarian flavor. Schumann wrote that this sonata “was of the purest, most self-sufficing music; as fine and clear and original a sonata as has ever proceeded from the greatest of master hands; especially fitting for the most refined family circles; to be played after the reading of a poem by Byron or Goethe.”
Cello Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Opus 109
Gabriel Fauré
Born: May 12, 1845, in Pamiers, France
Died: November 4, 1924, in Paris
Work Composed: 1917
“One could no more analyze a work of Fauré than one could dissect the wing of a butterfly,” wrote the French critic Bernard Gavoty. His structures are firm but never bulky, and their magic resides in the luminous, elusive beauty with which their melodies, harmonies, and counterpoint interact. The pianist Alfred Cortot, who joined cellist Gérard Hekking to premiere his Cello Sonata No. 1 in Paris on November 10, 1917, insisted that “in all M. Fauré’s work, the true novelty lies in the quality of the musical texture much more than in an unusual style of writing.”
In 1896, Gabriel Fauré succeeded Jules Massenet as the chief composition teacher at the Paris Conservatory and earned the abiding affection of his students, among whom were Maurice Ravel, Georges Enesco, and Nadia Boulanger. In 1905 he ascended to the school’s directorship and began loosening some its hidebound methods and restrictions. At about the same time, he was beset by hearing problems that would grow worse as the years passed. He was plagued not by deafness but by auditory distortion that made him misperceive pitches and balances, rendering certain musical sounds physically excruciating. In his later years, his eyesight also began to fail, and he suffered from sclerosis and emphysema. Encroaching decrepitude did not impede his creativity. In fact, Fauré achieved his creative height with a string of chamber masterpieces during his final decade: his Second Violin Sonata, his two cello sonatas, his Second Piano Quintet, his Piano Trio, and his String Quartet.
Though strikingly different in character, the cello sonatas share a sense of abstraction and contrapuntal conception, with extensive use of canon between the cello and piano lines. Both demonstrate meticulous attention to timbral coloration, and demand the performer’s precise attention to vibrato, voicing, balance, and bow-work. Both stress ternary meters, and their melodies tend to evolve though series of enormous, arch-like phrases rather than undergoing traditional development based on motivic fragmentation and reassembly.
The Cello Sonata No. 1 in D minor was written in the southern French town of Saint-Raphaël during the brief span of July and August 1917—the darkest days of World War I. The sonata is unremittingly serious. Its opening Allegro proposes a sense of urgency unaccustomed in Fauré, a nervous energy that is only slightly tempered by the serenity of the second subject; and its explosive melodic leaps, restless cross-rhythms, and furious down-bow accents only emphasize the tautness of its construction. In contrast, the second movement (Andante) is mournful; what begins as a limpid dirge grows in pathos and intensity before drifting into a peaceful calm. Cast in D major, the finale (Allegro commodo—a “comfortable Allegro”) leads to a more optimistic conclusion, though its dense textures are far from sunny. The movement exhibits the harmonic complexity engendered by Fauré’s superimposing modal elements over classic tonality: near the end, a flattened seventh proves hard to resolve, turning the entire conclusion into an extended, circuitous cadence with plagal overtones.
Tor Mordôn
Natalie Klouda
Born: 1984, in Suffolk, England
Work Composed: 2024
As a child, Natalie Klouda was drawn to her great-grandfather’s piano, which had long sat unplayed in her parents’ home. “I particularly enjoyed putting the sustain pedal down,” she recalled in an interview, “and imagining I was painting rainbows by running my hands up and down the length of the keyboard, all white or all black notes.” When she was eight, she was admitted to study violin at the Yehudi Menuhin School; a project to write compositions for Menuhin’s 80th birthday, in 1996, engaged her passion for both chamber music and composition. She continued to appear as a violinist. She was a founding member of the award-winning Finzi Quartet, which was formed in 2010 at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Her dedication to chamber music is reflected in her catalogue of compositions, with recent premieres including two piano trios (2019 and 2022) and a piano quintet (2022). She says that her compositions “have tended to be dramatic, atmospheric, multi-tonal, quirky.” She also serves as founder and co-director of the Highgate International Chamber Music Festival in Chesham (northwest of London), where Tor Mordôn was premiered by Isata and Sheku Kanneh-Mason on December 4, 2024.
“I love commissions with a topic or dedication,” Klouda says. “Having an excuse to research and try to understand something which I previously might have had no knowledge of before is something I absolutely relish.” She has provided this comment about Tor Mordôn:
This work has two contrasting movements, and the name and inspiration behind it pay homage to Isata and Sheku’s Antiguan and Welsh heritage.
In preparing to write this work, I explored the folklore, myths, and legends of Eryri/Snowdonia [in North Wales] (The Mabinogion) as well as Antiguan and Caribbean folklore. I was struck by the powerful oral storytelling traditions of both places and how human experience has been passed down and deeply enhanced the audience’s connection to the landscapes and to peoples of long ago.
Tor Mordôn literally means “sea mount of light.” The name is derived from Brythonic languages and connects both Eryri and Antigua. The name combines three elements: the sense of enlightenment and inspiration that can be felt in the presence of the highest peaks, and the sea/oceans for linking continents and serving as the birthplace for those very peaks rising out of it. I chose the ancient Brythonic languages to highlight the vast swathes of time that can disappear through storytelling and the wonder that people can enjoy those same landscapes and stories millennia apart.
The first movement has a contemplative start and explores my journey in discovering various mythical characters as well as the human connection to experiencing the vastness in time and presence of mountains. The second movement draws on the eccentric elements of the folktales as well as the more sinister drama and power of dramatic landscapes, which takes center stage right from the start.
This work is dedicated to Isata and Sheku’s grandfather, Arnold Mason. He himself played the violin growing up in Antigua and it was with interest and a quiet dedication that he listened to Isata and Sheku’s rehearsals and practice at their home in Nottingham during his visits.
Cello Sonata
Francis Poulenc
Born: January 7, 1899, in Paris, France
Died: January 30, 1963, in Paris
Work Composed: 1940–48
Francis Poulenc stands as a delightful paradox among 20th-century composers. Highbrows have been known to dismiss his music: it generally has a lightweight harmonic flavor, and even when he was sowing his wild oats as a young composer in the Jazz Age, Poulenc was always running a lap behind Stravinsky. On the other hand, musicians and audiences tend to love his music: its technical panache is undeniable, its neoclassicism is comforting, its wit makes them laugh out loud. And in his sacred music, as well as his more serious songs and chamber works—and certainly in his masterful opera Dialogues des Carmélites—Poulenc achieves a rare level of direct, sincere, profoundly spiritual expression.
Many of his sonatas were written with specific performers in mind. In the case of the Cello Sonata, the soloist was the eminent Pierre Fournier, who premiered the piece (with the composer at the piano) at Salle Gaveau in Paris on May 18, 1949. Fournier shared the work’s dedication with Poulenc’s friend Marthe Bosredon, “at whose home this sonata was sketched in 1940.”
Poulenc spent the period of World War II living in occupied France and many of his works from that period took on a spirit of unusual seriousness and even anguish. He managed to maintain his good spirits in the Cello Sonata, although writing it cost him considerable pain and dragged on through eight years. In August 1942, he wrote to Hélène Casella (wife of composer Alfredo Casella) to express the challenge of composing sonatas in general (“it is a difficult but amusing genre”). He referred to the Cello Sonata in letters over several years written to the baritone Pierre Bernac, and he happily reported its conclusion to friends in the summer of 1948.
Poulenc’s highly virtuosic writing for the cello sometimes emphasizes wide leaps and the grumbling quality of the instrument’s lower range to yield passages of amiable buffoonery; this reaches its apex in the comical third movement. On the other hand, he also uses to impressive effect the cello’s famous capacity for lyricism, most touching in the second movement and in the slow sections that begin and end the Finale. These two qualities combine overall, as they often do in Poulenc’s oeuvre, to yield a Chaplinesque feeling: the clown who embodies blunt humor, urbane sophistication, and deep human passion.
—James M. Keller
About the Artists
Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s mission is to make music accessible to all, whether performing for children, at an underground club, or in the world’s leading concert venues. Highlights this season include the Berlin Konzerthaus as artist in residence, Lucerne Festival, Czech Philharmonic, Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, WDR Symphony, Orchestre National de Lyon, Sinfonia of London, SWR Symphony Stuttgart, Camerata Salzburg, Pittsburgh Symphony, New World Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and City of Birmingham Symphony. With his pianist sister, Isata, he tours to Carnegie Hall and Wigmore Hall, as well as Bordeaux, Rome, Cincinnati, Toronto, Philadelphia, Dublin, Munich, Berlin, Antwerp, and Haarlem. He also appears with guitarist Plinio Fernandes and jazz pianist Harry Baker. Kanneh-Mason made his solo debut with the San Francisco Symphony last June, having previously appeared twice on the Great Performers Series, both in recital with Isata and on tour with the City of Birmingham Symphony.
Kanneh-Mason has performed every summer at the BBC Proms since 2017, including as soloist at the 2023 Last Night of the Proms. In 2024, he returned to Antigua, where he has family connections, as an ambassador for the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony. He is a Decca Classics recording artist, and sheet music collections of his repertoire, along with his own arrangements and compositions, are published by Faber.
Kanneh-Mason is a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music and in May 2022 he was appointed as the Academy’s first Menuhin Visiting Professor of Performance Mentoring. In 2024 he accepted the role as patron of UK Music Masters and remains an ambassador for both Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Future Talent. He was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List. After winning the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016, Kanneh-Mason’s performance at the wedding of the duke and duchess of Sussex at Windsor Castle in 2018 was watched by two billion people worldwide. He plays a Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700 which is on indefinite loan to him.
Isata Kanneh-Mason
Isata Kanneh-Mason debuted at the BBC Proms in 2023 and was invited to open the festival in 2024 with the BBC Symphony. Highlights of her 2024–25 season include the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie’s Freispiel festival, Ulster Orchestra’s season opening concert, and the Chineke! Orchestra on tour at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Berlin Konzerthaus, Brussels’s Bozar, and London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. She also solos with the London Philharmonic, Bergen Philharmonic, Bremen Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Weimar, Residentie Orkest, and North Carolina Symphony. Solo recital appearances include the Lucerne Festival, Piano aux Jacobins Toulouse, and Schumann-Haus Düsseldorf.
Recent performances include the Philadelphia Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra Ottawa, NCPA Orchestra Beijing, Royal Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, and Stockholm Philharmonic. She appeared in recital at the Beethoven Bonn and Rheingau festivals, as well as at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, and Boston’s Jordan Hall. Kanneh-Mason is a Decca Classics artist and has recorded four solo albums for the label. Her latest release presents music from two Mendelssohn siblings, including the First Piano Concerto by Felix and the long-lost Easter Sonata by Fanny, alongside transcriptions of some of Felix’s most famous music by Rachmaninoff and Liszt.
Kanneh-Mason has received the Leonard Bernstein Award from the Schleswig-Holstein Festival and an Opus Klassik award for best young artist. She also enjoys composing and arranging and released two collections of her favorite works for intermediate and advanced piano students through ABRSM Publishing. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut with Sheku on the Great Performers Series in April 2022.
