A French Salon

You’ve seen him many times before : Yan Levionnois has long been a devoted member of Les Dissonances, where he regularly chairs the cello section. This time he appears in a duo with the pianist Guillaume Bellom, in a concert that invites you to discover this talented musician – who studied with Marc Coppey and Truls Mörk – through mainstays and rarities of the French repertoire. Debussy for a time toyed with the idea of calling his sonata for cello and piano Pierrot faché avec la lune(‘Pierrot railing at the moon’), a title that would have marvellously captured the constant play between melancholy and humour that animates the piece. Fauré’s Sonata op. 109 is another seminal contribution to French chamber music. Exhibiting exceptional density, grand rhythmic vigour and magisterial contrapuntal tension, especially in its final movement, this prodigious, sober and virile sonata remains one of the key works from a major composer of the turn of the last century.