Dmytro Fonariuk & Xiaowen Shang

Performers

Notes on the performers

Dmytro Fonariuk

Dmytro Fonariuk is a professional clarinet player from Ukraine. Born in the Bila Tserkva, Kyiv region, in 1994, he started playing clarinet when he was 7 years old. From 2001 to 2009, he studied at the Music School Number 3, in Victor Koshytsky’s clarinet class. From 2010 to 2014, he studied at the Kyiv Music College R.M. Glier, in the class of Professor Roman Vovk, where received his Junior bachelor’s degree. From 2014 to 2020, he studied at the National Academy of Music of Ukraine (Kyiv), in the class of Professor Roman Vovk, where received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Among his achievements are: First prize of the All-Ukrainian competition in honour of K.E. Mulberg, Odessa, 2014; Grand Prix of the X All-Ukrainian Competition Classical Meridian Kyiv, 2014; First prize in the senior age category at Trumpets of Bukovina, Chernivtsi, 2015; First prize in The senior age category of the VII International Competition named after Dmytro Bida, Lviv, 2016. In 2018, he was Winner of the Grand Prix at the First International Competition for wind instruments named after V. Antoniv and M. Zakopets. He participated in numerous projects such as the Moldovan National Youth Orchestra (2016); the I, Culture Orchestra in Poland (2017); Music in Alps, Austria (2018); and Music in Alps, Austria (2022). From 2019 to 2022, he worked as member of the National Ensemble of Soloists Kyivska Kamerata. Now he studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London on the Master’s degree in performance in the class of Christopher Richards.

Xiaowen Shang

Xiaowen Shang is a pianist, harpsichordist and versatile musician, interested in early, classical and contemporary music. She has a wide range of repertoire from Renaissance composers such as Orlando Gibbons to contemporary composers like John Cage. She has worked with renowned musicians and composers such as Dame Imogen Cooper, Rachel Podger and Brett Dean. Xiaowen is also enthusiastic to collaborate with other musicians, composers and artists, including improvising with silent films, playing concerts with animation and premiering new works.

Xiaowen is studying with Joanna MacGregor at the Royal Academy of Music in London, entering her first year of Master’s degree at the Academy as a Bicentenary Scholar. She received many awards in her school career. Her recent awards include Edwin Samuel Dove Prize for special merit during studentship, Isaacs & Pirani Piano Trio Prize in 2022, Harold Samuel Bach Prize (harpsichord) and the May Mukle/Douglas Cameron Prize (cello and piano duo) in 2021. She also received the First Prize in the WCOM Harriet Cohen Bach competition (piano) in the Royal Academy of Music in 2019. Because of the prize, she was invited to join the Yeomen musician program in The Musician’s Company.

As an active musician performing on stage, her recent important performances include a full Bach program concert in Wigmore Hall, the Vaughan Williams’s Piano quintet in C minor at the Victoria and Albert Museum with the Whitman Ensemble in June 2021 and the harpsichord soloist of the Bach Keyboard concerto in F minor with the famous violinist, Rachel Podger as part of the “Bach the European” series in the Royal Academy of Music in April.

She also performed as a soloist in other venues and festivals such as St. James’s Piccadilly, Bloomsbury Festival and Dartington Festival. In addition, she has been performing in every Summer and Autumn Piano Festival of Royal Academy of Music from 2018 to 2022. In July 2022, she had her recording debut on Bach’s Goldberg Variations with the Linn Recording.

Programme

Programme notes

Johannes Brahms

Sonata No. 1 in F minor

1. Allegro appassionato
2. Andante un poco adagio
3. Allegretto grazioso
4. Vivace

The Clarinet Sonatas, Op. 120, Nos. 1 and 2, are a pair of works written for clarinet and piano by the Romantic composer Johannes Brahms. They were written in 1894 and are dedicated to the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld. The sonatas stem from a period late in Brahms’s life where he discovered the beauty of the sound and tonal colour of the clarinet. The form of the sonata was largely undeveloped until after the completion, after which the combination of clarinet and piano was more readily used in composers’ new works. These were the last chamber pieces Brahms wrote before his death and are considered two of the great masterpieces in the clarinet repertoire.

Source: Wikipedia

Francis Poulenc

Clarinet Sonata, FP 184

1. Allegro tristamente (Allegretto – Très calme – Tempo allegretto)
2. Romanza (Très calme)
3. Allegro con fuoco (Très animé)

The Sonate pour clarinette et piano (Clarinet Sonata), FP 184, for clarinet in B-flat and piano by Francis Poulenc dates from 1962 and is one of the last pieces he completed. It is dedicated to the memory of Arthur Honegger, who like Poulenc had belonged to the group Les Six.

Source: Wikipedia

Aaron Copland

Clarinet Concerto

1. 2 movements played back-to-back, linked by a cadenza

Copland acknowledged that his signature “bittersweet lyricism” like in the 1st movement of the Clarinet Concerto may have been influenced by his feelings of loneliness and social alienation over his homosexuality. Copland writes: “The instrumentation being clarinet with strings, harp, and piano, I did not have a large battery of percussion to achieve jazzy effects, so I used slapping basses and whacking harp sounds to simulate them. The Clarinet Concerto ends with a fairly elaborate coda in C major that finishes off with a clarinet glissando – or “smear” in jazz lingo.”

Source: Wikipedia

Mykola Lysenko (1842 – 1912)

Elegie

Lysenko was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor and ethnomusicologist of the late Romantic period. In his time he was the central figure of Ukrainian music, with an oeuvre that includes
operas, art songs, choral works, orchestral and chamber pieces, and a wide variety of solo piano music. He is often credited with founding a national music tradition during the Ukrainian national revival, in the vein of contemporaries such as Grieg in Norway, The Five in Russia as well as Smetana and Dvořák in what is now the Czech Republic.

Source: Wikipedia

Rostyslav Demchyshyn (b. 1948)

Dreams (from Japanese Suite)

Rostyslav Demchyshyn,was born in Lviv (Ukraine) and is a composer/conductor He began to learn to play on the piano at the age of five and studied at the Ukrainian Mykola Lvsenko Music Conservatory in Lviv. He created and headed the Galitski Symphony Orchestra. Dreams is from the Japanese Suite for clarinet and strings.

Source: Wikipedia