Erika Geldsetzer & Ian Fountain

The Pharos Arts Foundation continues its Concert and Recital Series with a violin and piano recital with two very special artists. The youngest winner of the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Masters Competition in Tel Aviv at the age of 19, in 1989, pianist Ian Fountain has enjoyed a wide-ranging and varied career, performing extensively throughout Europe, the USA, the UK and the Far East with the world’s most renowned orchestras. He will team with violinist Erika Geldsetzer, who, besides being the founder of the celebrated Fauré Quartett, has appeared as a soloist with famous orchestras in all major concert halls around the globe. For their recital in Cyprus, on Thursday 26 February 2015 at The Shoe Factory, the Duo will perform sonatas by Beethoven, Elgar and Richard Strauss.

IAN FOUNTAIN / PIANO
Ian Fountain was educated as a chorister at New College, Oxford and later at Winchester College. He studied piano under Sulamita Aronovsky at the RNCM. In 1989, he became the youngest winner of the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Masters Competition in Tel Aviv at the age of 19. He has enjoyed a wide-ranging and varied career, ever since, performing extensively throughout Europe, the USA, the UK and the Far East, with orchestras such as the London Symphony and Sir Colin Davis, the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta, and the Czech Philharmonic and Jiri Belohlavek. Ian Fountain has also performed with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Philharmonia, London Philharmonic, Halle, CBSO, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Singapore Symphony and Utah Symphony, amongst many others. In Moscow, he was invited to open the 1992/3 season of the Moscow Conservatoire, and in Poland, he marked the 150th anniversary of Chopin’s death by playing both Chopin Concertos in Krakow.

As a recitalist, Ian Fountain has performed in New York, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Jerusalem, amongst others. He is a regular guest of international festivals such as Prague Spring, Berlin, Schleswig-Holstein, Enescu (Bucharest) and Kuhmo. He has performed an extensive repertoire of over 60 concertos, including the complete cycle of Mozart Concertos. As a chamber musician, he enjoys many long-standing collaborations with musicians such as David Geringas, Ulf Hoelscher, and the Mandelring and Emperor quartets, performing in concerts and festivals throughout Europe, Japan and Korea.

In recent years, Ian Fountain has also appeared as a conductor – mainly with the Israel Chamber Orchestra with which he has developed a close relationship.

Recent performances include concerts with the Hungarian Philharmonic and Zoltan Kocsis in Budapest, the Enescu Philharmonic and Cristian Mandeal in Bucharest, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Paavo Jarvi in Japan, the London Chamber Orchestra and the Armenian Philharmonic in Yerevan.

Fountain has made several critically acclaimed recordings, including 20th Century Piano Sonatas for EMI, Beethoven Diabelli Variations for CRD, and the complete works for cello and piano of Beethoven, Chopin and Mendelssohn, as well as Rachmaninov with cellist David Geringas for Sony and Haenssler Classics. In 2008, he collaborated in the preparation of the present editions of Beethoven Sonatas and Variations for Piano and Cello published by Henle Verlag, Munich.

Since 2001, Ian Fountain has been a piano professor at the Royal Academy of Music, London. He holds an annual summer master-class at the Accademia di Cervo, Italy, and further master-classes around the world. He has served on the juries of international piano competitions, including at the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in 2011.

ERIKA GELDSETZER / VIOLIN
Born into a family of musicians, Erika Geldsetzer started her first violin lessons at the age of six. At 12, she was accepted at the Musikhochschule Koeln (Music Academy Cologne), and went on to study in Karlsruhe with Prof. Ulf Hoelscher. She followed postgraduate studies in London with Erich Gruenberg at the RAM and in Vienna with Prof. Gerhard Schulz.

As chamber music was always her passion, Erika founded, in 1995, the Fauré Quartett (piano quartet). The Quartet enjoys a highly successful career and has performed in all major concert halls ever since. It has participated in many festival around the globe such as the Schleswig Holstein Musikfestival in Germany, Festival de Radio France in Montpellier, Martha Argerich Festival in Buenos Aires and the Enescu Festival in Bucharest. The Quartet has appeared in venues such as the Wigmore Hall in London, Philharmonie and Konzerthaus Berlin, Lincoln Center in New York, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Izumi Hall in Osaka, Alte Oper in Frankfurt and Snape Maltings Concert Hall in Aldeburgh. The Fauré Quartett has also recorded major works of the piano quartet literature – such as quartets by Mozart, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Fauré, Dvorák and Schumann – for Deutsche Grammophon, it has won two Echo Klassik awards, and it has recently released a CD with works by Richard Strauss and Mahler for Sony Classics.

Besides being a regular guest in various chamber music festivals around the world, Erika Geldsetzer is in great demand as a soloist and she has performed with renowned orchestras such as the South West radio orchestra Germany (SWR), the University Orchestra Heidelberg, Landesjugendorchester Rheinland-Pfalz, the Bodensee Chamber Orchestra, the Capella Classica Betzdorf and the Philarmonia. Along with the more well-known violin concertos – like Sibelius, Mendelssohn and Mozart – Erika enjoys performing the lesser known masterpieces of the repertoire, including the violin concertos of Richard Strauss, Wolfgang Erich Korngold and Edward Elgar.

Between 2009 and 2012, Erika Geldsetzer taught at the German chamber music association “Villa Musica”, where she was also a member of the Ensemble Villa Musica as well as one of the founding members of the String Quartett Villa Musica. She regularly gives master-classes in Germany and abroad – for example in Melbu (Norway), Tulsa (USA) and Manchester (England), and since 2014, she has a teaching position at the Universität der Künste Berlin (University of the Arts, Berlin).
As a Duo , Erika Geldsetzer and Ian Fountain have been playing together since 2011.They have been invited regularly to play in major concert halls in Germany and abroad.

THE PROGRAMME:
Beethoven: Sonata in A major, Op.12, No.2
Elgar: Sonata in E minor, Op.82
interval
R. Strauss: Sonata in E-flat major, Op.18

Beethoven’s A major Sonata, Op.12, No.2 is among the least frequently performed of his ten sonatas for violin and piano. He composed the three sonatas of Op.12 between 1797 and 1799. Thus they are products of the high classic era, rather than the early romantic period. In fact, eight of Beethoven’s ten violin sonatas were composed by 1802, preceding his so-called ‘heroic decade.’ More 18th-century galant style than heroic or dramatic, the A major sonata is full of charm.
Elgar’s Violin Sonata in E minor was composed between 1918-19, concurrently with this cello concerto, the string quartet and the piano quintet. The composer had been greatly depressed by the outbreak of the First World War and these compositions are markedly different from much of his earlier output, less self-confident and more contemplative. Shortly after this burst of composition, Lady Elgar, his helpmate and constant companion, died and with her, his inspiration. Although he lived for another 14 years, he composed hardly anything and certainly nothing to compare with these last masterpieces. Written in 1887-88, Richard Strauss’s Sonata in E-flat major is roughly contemporaneous with the famous symphonic fantasy Aus Italien and the famous tone poem Don Juan, and the proximity is everywhere apparent in the music. The Sonata is considered the last of Strauss’ works to adhere to classical forms At the time of writing the piece, he was in love with the soprano Pauline de Ahna, and the work exudes a youthful, optimistic exuberance and an undercurrent of sweetness that pervades even the bold virtuoso writing.

Tickets:
€15 / €10 Concessions & members of the Pharos Arts Foundation,
Box Office: Directly from the Foundation’s website www.pharosartsfoundation.org/ or Tel. 96669003 (Monday - Friday 10:00am-3:00pm)