DUO Nuala McKenna & Robert Kulek

Cellist Nuala McKenna and pianist Robert Kulek join forces in this versatile program with pieces by four 20th century composers: Bohuslav Martinu, Vitezslava Kapralova, Francis Poulenc and Paul Hindemith. All four composers wrote these works during a world war.

Martinu was persecuted by the Nazi regime because of his political views. He composed his first cello sonata in 1939 shortly before fleeing to the USA. Two years earlier he met the highly gifted Czech composer Vitezslava Kapralova who came to Paris to study composition with him. They fell madly in love, engaged in an affair which however came to an end when she married the writer Jiří Mucha. Two months after her wedding, Kapralova died due to illness, aged 25. The 'Deux ritournelles pour violoncelle et piano, op. 25' are her last work, written in 1940.

Poulenc, endangered by the Nazi regime as a homosexual and supporter of the 'Front national des musiciens', wrote his sonata in 1940, shortly after being discharged from military service after France's surrender to Germany.

Hindemith's early work, Three Pieces Op.8, was written in 1917, in the third year of the First World War, before he was drafted into military service. Shortly before, his father died in military service.

Programme:
Vitezslava Kapralova (1915-1940): Deux ritournelles pour violoncelle et piano, op. 25 (1940)
Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959): Cellosonata No. 1 (1939)
- Intermission -
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963): Three Pieces Op. 8 (1917)
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963): Sonata for cello and piano (1940)

Nuala McKenna - cello
Robert Kulek - piano