DeClassified Music | 2025

Enjoy this uplifting recital of major classics from the French and German repertory. Linked together by their glowing, radiant sounds, this program of works is curated from the idea of offering music bestowed with a ‘sunny’ nature and inherent beauty.  

 

​The first part of the recital comes from France: Debussy’s shimmering Violin and Piano Sonata followed by Lili Boulanger’s delicately heart-warming Two Pieces - 'Nocturne' and 'Cortège' - and then Messiaen’s Theme and Variations, this built on a tender and lyrical idea consisting of a floating melody. Composed in the same year as Messiaen’s Theme and Variations, the second half of the program commences with either an early work from Sydney’s own Dulcie Holland, or with Margaret Sutherland's Nocturne. In Tribute is typical of much of Holland's music, inhabiting a melodic, optimistic and sunny space, and Sutherland's Nocturne ties in to the program with a second perspective of the night piece, alongside Boulanger's.

 

The recital then moves to Germany for Brahms’ Sonata No.1 in G major Op.78 for Violin and Piano. A Romantic masterpiece of exquisite beauty and lyricism, the three movements of this work are interrelated and Brahms expertly allows the violin and piano parts to echo one another and intertwine whilst demanding virtuosity from both players. The final movement is known to transport its listeners, as it did for Clara Schumann who wrote to the composer, “…I wish that the last movement could accompany me in my journey from here to the next world.” 

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Claude Debussy - Sonata in G minor for Violin and Piano (1917)

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Lili Boulanger - Deux Morceaux for Violin and Piano (Nocturne & Cortège, 1914)

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Olivier Messiaen - Thème et Variations for Violin and Piano (1932)

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Interval

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Dulcie Holland - In Tribute: Fantasy upon a theme of Hooper Brewster-Jones (1932) / Margaret Sutherland - Nocturne (1944)

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Johannes Brahms - Sonata No.1 in G major Op.78 for Violin and Piano (1879)