The 2009-2010 Concert Season at the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari continues with its sixth appointment: in a unique, unmissable evening of chamber music, Saturday 5th December at 7pm (session A), the duo of excellent musicians, violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and pianist and composer Fazil Say, perform. “Le Figaro” recently defined Say as: «not only a brilliant pianist…will surely be one of the 21st Century’s great artists».

The musical programme includes: Sonata in A major for violin and piano “A Kreutzer” op. 47 by Ludwig van Beethoven; Sonata for violin and piano by Fazil Say; Popular Rumanian Dances (arrangement for violin and piano by Zoltán Székely) by Béla Bartók; Sonata for violin and piano by Maurice Ravel.

The concert is dedicated to the “classical sonata”, instrumental composition that was most expressive in the second half of the 18th century, thanks to Franz Joseph Haydn and to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but above all to the immense and brilliant production of sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven (Bonn, 1770 – Vienna, 1827). Besides the 32 familiar sonatas for piano, Beethoven wrote the most celebrated Op. 47 known as Kreutzer, between 1802 and May 1803. The composition, for violin and piano highlights expressiveness and virtuosity that remain unsurpassed to this day.
The Popular Rumanian Dances, composed initially in 1915 only for piano are the fruits of an arrangement of seven dance melodies collected by Béla Bartók (Sînnicolau Mare, Rumania, 1881 – New York, 1945) from villages in Transylvania between 1910 and 1912. The main motifs originate from the repertoire of street recorder players and violinists. Béla Bartók wrote the musical arrangement for orchestra in 1917 and in 1926 authorized the transcription for piano and violin by Zoltán Székely.
The composition Sonata for violin and piano by Maurice Ravel (Ciboure, 1875 – Paris, 1937) is long and elaborate. The first drafts date back to 1923, but the final version is dated 1927, after much re-examination. The independence of the violin and the piano are clearly shown by the composer, who believes that they are in fact “two essentially incompatible instruments”. The second movement reveals Ravel’s great interest in jazz, combined, in a most ironic and personal manner, with delicate and sensual late- Romantic musical traces.