Cellist Sung-Won Yang and pianist Enrico Pace smile beside a grand piano, with Yang holding his cello. A graphic marks the Main Stage concert date, September 19.

MAIN STAGE CONCERTS

Cellist Sung-Won Yang & Pianist Enrico Pace

South Korean cellist Sung-Won Yang and Italian pianist Enrico Pace return to Halifax to open our new season with works by J.S. Bach, Brahms, Debussy, and Franck.

Saturday, September 19, 2026 • 7:30pm
 Stage at St. Andrews (Halifax United Church)
 Accessible Venue

This performance is made possible with the generous support of Anita Gao-Lee and Yi Lee.  

Season Sponsor: NICE MOVES / Red Door Realty

Program Information

 

South Korean cellist Sung-Won Yang and Italian pianist Enrico Pace return to Halifax to open our new season with a program spanning three centuries of music for cello and piano. J.S. Bach’s Sonata in G minor, originally written for viola da gamba and keyboard, sits alongside Brahms’s Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor and Debussy’s Cello Sonata, one of the composer’s final works. The program also includes César Franck’s Sonata in A major, originally written for violin and heard here in an arrangement for cello and piano. Together, these four works explore the changing relationship between the two instruments, from Bach through the Romantic music of Brahms and Franck to Debussy’s distinctive early twentieth-century sound. Sung-Won Yang performs internationally as both a soloist and chamber musician and has appeared in major halls across Europe, North America, and Asia. Enrico Pace, a GRAMMY Award-nominated pianist and major prize winner, is widely recognized for his concert and chamber music career.

 

Program Notes

 

J.S. Bach (1685-1750)
Sonata for Viola da Gamba and Keyboard No. 3 in G minor
I. Vivace
II. Adagio
III. Allegro

Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer with over a thousand pieces of music to his credit, yet fewer than forty of his works were sonatas, even though the sonata had been popularized by Arcangelo Corelli and Bach’s contemporary, Antonio Vivaldi. In the mid Eighteenth Century, a sonata referred to a piece of instrumental music suitable for performance in church (sonata da chiesa) or at court (sonata da camera). Almost all sonatas during the Baroque Period were written for keyboard, either as a solo instrument or as an accompaniment with one other instrument.

Johann Bach's Sonata No. 3 for viola da gamba and harpsichord in G minor, BWV 1029  - as well as two other sonatas he arranged for the same instruments - were likely composed during Bach's later years in Leipzig — around 1730 or 1740, although the exact dates are not known. At the time, he was serving as Cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig as well as holding appointments at the court of Elector Frederick Augustus in Dresden.  It was a period during which Bach was moving towards more intellectually and technically ambitious works.  In this piece, Bach takes the harpsichord out of the accompanying role, setting it as an equal partner in a complex web of counterpoint with the viola da gamba. The two instruments are in continuous dialogue. It features three movements that follow the typical fast–slow–fast pattern typical of Italian sonata forms. The sonata begins with a rousing allegro. After the dramatic and intricate first movement, the work moves into a gentle adagio characterized by long, expressive lines on viola da gamba. The final movement features a dance-like energy where Bach's masterful counterpoint skills are displayed in full force.

 

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1 in E minor, Op. 38
I. Allegro non troppo
II. Allegretto quasi Menuetto
III. Allegro

Johannes Brahms was a painstaking composer. He often laboured over a piece and then put it away, coming back to it later, sometimes years later. This was the case with his Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1 in E minor.  He began work on the sonata in the summer of 1862. He completed the first two movements and set it aside. During the fall of 1862, he made his first visit to Vienna.  He found employment there as conductor of the Vienna Singakademie.  While in that position, he programmed a fair amount of music by J. S. Bach, so it is not surprising that when he resigned from his position in June of 1864 to allow himself more time for composition, the music of Bach was top of mind. He revised his Cello Sonata and completed the third movement. He called the piece a “homage to J. S. Bach” and he borrowed themes from Bach’s Art of the Fugue for use in the opening and closing movements of the sonata.

The opening movement begins with a lyrical melody in the cello over chords in the piano, a melody that increases and fades in intensity. The melody then passes to the piano where it is further developed. The variations build a sense of drama while never losing the lyrical quality. The movement, which makes up fully one half of the sonata, ends with a quiet serenity.  The second movement, as its title suggests, is modelled on the minuet, a graceful dance form of the Seventeenth Century. The music relates back to the Classical era in some of its structure and tone. The finale, another allegro – Brahms has departed from the standard fast-slow-fast pattern of earlier sonatas – has been called a fugue, and it certainly has the intricacy of a fugal pattern. Lyrical, with staccato passages, the finale builds to a satisfying climax. While essentially a composer of the Romantic Era, Brahms shows a wonderful mastery of the elements of Baroque and Classical compositional techniques.

 

Intermission

 

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Sonata for Cello and Piano, L. 135
I. Prologue: Lent, sostenuto e molto risoluto
II. Sérénade: Modérément animé
III. Finale: Animé, léger et nerveux

Claude Debussy was born into a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, yet he showed enough musical talent as a child that he was admitted to the Paris Conservatory as a ten year old. There he studied piano, and later, composition. As a student, he did not get on well with his composition teachers because of “his failure to follow the orthodox rules of composition”; still he won the Prix de Rome for his composition L’enfant prodigue in his final year at the Conservatory. He was open to a wide range of influences and did not find his mature style until he was in his thirties. Even then, success did not come quickly. It was not until his only opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, was performed in 1902 that Debussy became a well-known name in France and abroad.

In 1915, Debussy began work on a project, Six Sonatas for Various Instruments; it was planned as a homage to Eighteenth Century French composers, Jean-Philippe Rameau and Francois Couperin.  Debussy described himself on the title pages as a French musician. He saw these compositions as an affirmation of French culture - a political statement during the World War. The Sonata for Cello and Piano was the first of the set. Debussy completed it in the summer of 1915. The opening movement is marked “slow, sustained and determined”. It begins with a melancholy song in the cello but it rises to a crisis before closing with a reverential calm. The second movement explores the full range of the cello sound and has an almost jazz-like feel. The Finale alternates wild energy with a moonlit calm. While the three movement structure may be conventional, the music itself shows Debussy still failing to follow what his teachers at the Conservatory called “the orthodox rules of composition”. He was far too original for that.

 

César Franck (1822-1890)
Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major (arr. for cello)     
I. Allegretto ben moderato
II. Allegro                                                                                                                                                                                                               III. Recitativo–Fantasia: Ben moderato
IV. Allegretto poco mosso

Eugene Ysaye, like Cesar Franck, was born in Lieges in Belgium. By the time he reached his mid-twenties he had begun to achieve fame throughout Europe as a violin virtuoso. While in Paris, he became acquainted with Franck who at the time was a Professor of Composition at the Paris Conservatory. The two became close enough that Franck composed The Sonata for Violin and Piano as a wedding gift for his young friend. The score arrived the morning of Ysaye’s wedding. After reading it through, Ysaye was sufficiently moved that he played the sonata for his guests at the wedding reception. It became a staple of his concert repertoire for the next forty years. The renowned cellist Jules Delsart, a colleague of Franck’s at the Paris Conservatory, was so moved upon hearing the Violin Sonata that he asked permission to arrange the work for cello and piano. In doing so, he left the piano part untouched and revised only the cello part. It is the only transcription that had Franck’s blessing.

The sonata was originally composed in a conventional four movement slow-quick-slow-quick pattern. Ysaye suggested that the first movement should be played at a brisker tempo, so Franck agreed to label the movement allegretto, but added the modifier “moderately”. The movement begins with a lyrical theme in the cello which is taken up by the piano; it is the thematic core of the work as a whole. The second movement opens with a wild turbulence, moves to a more calm deliberation before moving off with determined intensity.  The third movement is more free form as the score marking indicates (Recitativo-Fantasia) and it is always reassuringly lyrical. The Finale recalls the opening movement with its lovely optimistic theme that is played in canon, the violin following the piano’s lead a bar later. It is no surprise, upon hearing this sonata that it is Franck's most popular work, and, in France at least, the most generally accepted work in the whole repertoire of chamber music.

Program notes written by Larry Bent