![]() Among the achievements of his own magnificent Solo Cello Sonata of 1915 is the way it elaborates on Bach’s use of folk music (each of Bach’s suites ending with a rustic gigue). Kodály was the first to take up Bach’s gauntlet. ![]() It is within that legacy that the works on this programme were created. What Casals so eloquently demonstrated in performing Bach’s Suites, though, was that the cello could truly speak entirely in its own right, with no support from orchestra or any other instrument. The cello’s singing qualities had already been revealed by a previous generation of cellists – most notably the musician Tchaikovsky called ‘the tsar of cellists’, Karl Davydov (1838–1889), whose pupils Hanuš Wihan and Carl Fuchs in turn inspired such great masterpieces as the concertos of Dvorák and Elgar (the latter’s being the work that first inspired Jonathan Swensen to take up the cello) and then there’s the great Bohemian cellist David Popper (1843–1913), whose pupils included Jenö Kerpely, for whom Kodály wrote his Solo Cello Sonata. The cello as an impassioned solo voice dates back at least to the six cello suites composed by JS Bach in the early decades of the 18th century – or, perhaps more precisely, as they were first widely revived and propagated early in the 20th century by the great Spanish cellist, Pablo Casals (1876–1973). He also performs at festivals in Denmark and further afield, including the Tivoli Festival, the Copenhagen Summer Festival, the Hindsgavl Summer Festival and the Usedomer Musikfestival. Swensen has performed with orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra, and Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música. In his native Denmark, Swensen was also a recipient of the Musikanmelderringens Artist Prize in 2020, the Jacob Gades Scholarship in 2019, the Léonie Sonning Talent Prize in 2017 and the first prize winner at the Danish String Competition in 2016. He is the recipient of the 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant and also the winner of the 2018 Khachaturian International Cello Competition. Swensen won the 2019 Windsor Festival International String Competition, his prize for winning included the recording of this brilliant debut album as part of the Windsor Festival's ongoing relationship with Champs Hill Records. Works that stand the test of time do so because they will always remain fresh to interpretation, and the moment they are played, they become once again fresh, something that is happening right now, a story in need of being told in a different way which we haven't heard yet. In my opinion, this is what makes music amazing. The fact that it was written many years ago does not change that the music is happening now, in this moment, when the audience hears it. It is only when I am playing that I truly feel music. Swensen comments: "My goal with this album was to create the illusion that the music was being played for the first time: a fresh take, what one might call a 'creation of sound in the moment'. Alongside the Kodály sonata sits the seldom-heard Khachaturian Sonata-Fantasie for Solo Cello, plus a newly commissioned work by Danish composer Bent Sørensen, Farewell-Fantasia. Despite the fact that the score does not state that it is a cello concerto, it has always been considered as such.Jonathan Swensen offers a fresh take on lesser-known works for solo cello for his stunning debut album, Fantasia. Written between 19 for Mstislav Rostropovich 'Tout un monde' is considered one of the most important 20th-century additions to the cello repertoire and several major cellists have recorded it. Alongside a new recording of the famous 'Strophes sur le nom de Sacher', Emmanuelle Bertrand joins with her partners in the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester to pay an eagerly awaited tribute to the ‘distant world’ hymned by the poems of Baudelaire and sublimely echoed by Dutilleux, the most sensitive composer of our time. The filiation is a natural one, for at an early age fate placed Dutilleux under the auspices of the composer of 'Pelléas' and in the vicinity of the cello, which his brother played. $ ĭutilleux, the centenary of whose birth we celebrate on 22 January 2016, made his appearance on earth just a few months before the premiere of one of Debussy’s final compositions: the Cello Sonata presented on this disc.
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