Peter Cigleris & Dina Duisen

Performers

Notes on the performers

Peter Cigleris

Clarinettist Peter Cigleris is in demand as a soloist and chamber musician. He has appeared on BBC Radio Three’s ‘In Tune’ programme talking with Sean Rafferty and playing live with the Tippett Quartet. He has also performed live for the BBC in the Radio Three lunchtime recital. Peter has worked with Martin Cousin, Mark Bebbington, Julian Lloyd Webber performing for various music clubs and festivals around the UK including, the Windsor and Wooburn Festival, English Music Festival, Carlisle International Music Festival and the ICA ‘ClarinetFest’.

Dina Duisen

Kazakh – British pianist Dina Duisen was born into a family of musicians in Almaty, Kazakhstan. At the age of five, Dina started studying piano at Kulyash Bayseitova State Special School for Gifted Children together with her two brothers Ordabek and Ilyas, who are both violinists. By the age of thirteen she had made her debut with the Symphony Orchestra. After graduating from school, Dina continued her studies at the Kazakh National Academy of Music, graduating with distinction in 2005, before being awarded a full scholarship on the Artist Diploma programme at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, from which she graduated in 2008. At the same time, Dina was invited to work as a teacher of music at the Texas Wesleyan University. In September 2008, Dina started studying for the new Master of Arts Degree in Performance at the Royal Academy of Music, under the tutelage of Christopher Elton, Hamish Milne and Kathryn Stott, and graduated with distinction in 2011. She took part in IMS Prussia Cove Masterclasses and Open Chamber Music and her thanks go to Hamish Ogston for his sponsorship and on-going support. Twice Dina participated at Sergei Babayan Piano Academy in Cleveland Institute of Music. Dina was a regular participant of the Oxford Piano Festival and played at the 20th Anniversary Alumni Concert in 2018.

Programme

Programme notes

Camile Saint-Seans

Clarinet Sonata in Eb Op. 167

1. Allegretto
2. Allegro animato
3. Lento
4. Molto allegro

Saint-Saëns’s most durable contributions to the chamber literature have been his sonatas: two for violin and piano, two for cello and piano, and one each for oboe, clarinet and bassoon, each with piano accompaniment. It was during the last year of his life that Saint-Saëns conceived the idea of writing a sonata for each of the woodwind instruments, thus enhancing their repertoire and providing three monumental works for the sonata literature. Starting with Oboe Sonata in D major Op 166, dedicated to Louis Bas, an extraordinary oboe virtuoso, he continued with the Clarinet Sonata in E flat major Op 167, dedicated to Auguste Perier, a fine player of astonishing technique, and lastly, with the Bassoon Sonata in G major Op 168, written for Léon Letellier, the first bassoon of the Opéra and the Société des Concerts. Saint-Saëns had intended also to compose sonatas for flute and for cor anglais but he died before he was able to complete the project. In each sonata the piano is skilfully integrated with the wind
instrument. The distinctive timbre and versatility of each instrument are expertly displayed. The spare, evocative, classical lines, haunting melodies, and superb formal structures underline these beacons of the neoclassical
movement. Though the works were not performed during his lifetime, Saint-Saëns did have the satisfaction of knowing that the sonatas were approved by their dedicatees. Their importance in the woodwind repertoire cannot be exaggerated.

Cecile Hartog

Chateaux de Espagne No. 1 & No. 2

Hartog was an English composer and pianist, born in London. As a composer she wrote solo piano music, a Barcarolle in G minor and the two Chateaux en Espagne for clarinet and piano, and songs, including settings of The Years at the Spring (Browning, performed at The Proms in 1909).

Source: Wikipedia

Roxanna Panufnik

LOLlaby

Panufnik studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music and, since then, has written a wide range of pieces – opera, ballet, music theatre, choral works, orchestral and chamber compositions, and music for film and television. This piece was written in 2015 as a birthday present for Lucas Dick.

Vahan Salorian

Duo for Clarinet and Piano

In April 2022, he was lead composer for The Opera Story’s multi-media retelling of ‘Beauty and the 7 Beasts’ (shortlisted for the Fedora Prize) and created a brand new orchestration of Kurt Weill’s ‘The Tsar Has His Photograph Taken’ for the Guildhall School of Music of Drama in May. He was composer and musical director of ‘London’s Turbulent Son’- a full length musical telling the story of Thomas Becket, patron saint of London. The show took place in The Guildhall Hall Yard in June 2022 as part of the Becket Pageant for London, the first Pageant in the City for over 500 years. Duo for clarinet and piano was a commission for Peter Cigleris.

Fernande Decruck

Cantilène

Fernande Decruck was a French organist and prolific composer of woodwind music. She contributed numerous works to the clarinet repertory, included several extant reed trios, a piano-wind sextet, six clarinet duets, three solos for B-flat clarinet and piano, as well as a solo for contrabass clarinet and piano. In addition, records indicate she composed a clarinet concerto that is tragically lost at this time. This piece was composed in 1933.

Francis Poulenc

Clarinet Sonata FP184

1. Allegro tristamente
2. Romanza
3. Allegro con fuoco

This clarinet sonata is one of the last pieces that Poulenc completed. It is dedicated to the memory of Arthur Honegger, who like Poulenc had belonged to the group Les Six. The clarinettist Benny Goodman, who commissioned the piece, was intended to premiere it with the composer accompanying. Poulenc died suddenly of a heart attack on 30 January 1963 before it was published, and an editor was employed to ascertain the identity of some notes, as well as provide missing dynamics and articulations.