There’s so many wonderful works being performed in the Festival it’s hard to pick out one for comment, but I was taken with Joy Aberdein’s programme notes for the Kreutzer:
This is the grandest of Beethoven’s ten sonatas for violin and piano, and was composed for George Polgreen Bridgetower, an Afro-Polish-born virtuoso violinist who, with Beethoven on piano, premiered the sonata in Vienna in 1803. Both performers had to improvise the unfinished sections. Beethoven completed the quartet but there was a falling-out with Bridgetower. The new dedicatée, the French violinist, Rodolfe Kreutzer, never played the work, but he did declare it unplayable.
I’m sure our hearty team of wonderful musicians will prove Kreutzer wrong and make it very playable!
The Kreutzer Sonata will feature in the concert of the same name on Friday 8th February commencing 7.30pm in Nelson Cathedral.