Here is a musical trip where the violin and the harp will take us to explore the German, Italian, Jewish and Hungarian music. Isabelle Durin and Agnès Peytour, French musicians will perform works by Bach, Donizetti, Spohr, Roussel, Bloch, Monti, composers for whom the melody is the very essence of the musical langage.

Program: 

L. SPOHR (1784 –1859): Sonate en C minor
Adagio-Allegro vivace
Andante-Allegro

The Sonata in C minor hovers stylistically between the classicism of Haydn and Mozart and Spohr’s own ‘spicier’ musical language. There are two movements, each of which is prefaced by a slow introduction which contains material to be used in the faster sections. In the second movement, the slow music returns just before the close, which seems to end emphatically with two loud chords, only to be followed by three final soft ones; quiet endings to works were to become a Spohr fingerprint in the future. As he was feeling his way with the harp writing, the sonata is of only moderate difficulty compared with the later works.
Spohr was a German composer and violinist; then he composed works for violin and harp, and works to be played by him and his wife together.

J.S. BACH (1685-1750) : partita n°3 for violin: Loure and Gavotte
Bach composed this partita in dance-form movements, and firmly established the technical capability of the violin as a solo instrument. The pieces often served as archetypes for solo violin pieces by later generations of composers, including Eugene Ysaÿe and Bela Bartok.

G.DONIZZETI (1797-1848) : Larghetto and Allegro
Along with Rossini, Donizetti was a leading composer of the bel canto opera style during the first half of the nineteenth century.

E. BLOCH (1860-1939) : Nigun (Baal Shem)
His jewish-inspired works are plenteaous, particularly in a cycle as Baal Shem, three pictures of the Hassidic life (1923) inspired by the hassidic movement, which count the music as one of the means of achieving mystic ecstasy, through dance and nigun (song).

A. ROUSSEL (1869-1937): Impromptu for harp, opus 21
His Impromptu for Harp is a transitional piece, tightly structured, but still scented with Impressionist perfume. Roussel was no stranger to the harp, and so he generally avoided such harp clichés as broken chords, although he did indulge in the occasional glissando, at that time a novel effect. The piece, dedicated to and premiered by Lily Laskine quickly became central to the harp repertor.

A. GOLDFADEN (1840-1908) : Rozhinkes mit mandlen
Abraham Goldfaden, the father of the Yiddish thater, was b Ukraine. Raisins and almonds is the revival of an old Yiddish lullaby that sings of the need “to escape from the ghetto to a land of plenty, a country gold with raisins and almonds.

Vittorio MONTI (1868-1922): Czardas
A rhapsodical concert piece written in 1904, it is a well-known folkloric piece based on a Hungarian csardas. he piece has seven different sections, each one of a different tempo. There are also many different dynamic changes in the piece,

Isabelle Durin – violin

After studying violin for several years, she entered the “Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional” in Versailles in Alexandre Brussilovsky’s class, where she won a first prize (gold medal) in violin, as well as a
first prize in chamber music and honorary first prize for violin.
In the same time she studied philosophy in the University La Sorbonne and obtained a post graduate diploma (D.E.A.) in 1998.
She was accepted at the “Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique” in Lyon where she worked with Jean Estournet and Kazimierz Olechovski. She received her degree (DNESM) in 2001, after which she
further perfected her knowledge and practice of chamber music alongside famous violinists like Patrice Fontanarosa and Jean-Pierre Sabouret, Boris Garlitsky, Roland Daugareil and Shmuel Ashkenazi (during the Shleswig Holstein Muzik Festival in Lübeck.)
She also attended the chamber music class at the “Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique” in Paris (Alain Meunier and Michel Strauss) and toured, notably with the Gustav Mahler Jugend Orchestra.
She has been a member of the Ile-de-France National Orchestra under the baton of Yoel Levi since 2003, when she received the bronze medal from the Society for the Encouragement of Progress.
In collaboration with French cultural centers, she gives concerts in France and abroad in prestigious venues, including the Opera and the French Space in Hanoi, the Museum of Art and History of Judaism and the Holocaust Memorial in Paris, the Jewish Museum in Prague and the Galicia Jewish Museum in Cracow.
Since 2002, she has been the artistic director of the Musical Festival of the Château of the Legion of Honor in Pouy-sur-Vannes.
With Michaël Ertzscheid, she performed in United-States (Miami Beach, West Palm Beach, Puerto Rico), and in Colombia (Medelin, Bogota, Cali) in april 2011 during a tour organized by the French Delegation of
the Alliances Françaises in USA.

Agnès Peytour – harp

Agnès PEYTOUR was born in Nice (France) and studied music in her native city at the Conservatoire National de Région in Elisabeth FONTAN-BINOCHE’S classes and Michelle VUILLAUME’S classes.

In 1994, she receives the first Prize of the Dans le sillage de Lily Laskine competition. In 1995, she obtains her degrees in Musical Studies (Diplôme d’Etudes Musicales)- a Degree which includes a First Overall Harp Prize, a First Prize in Chamber Music and a First Prize in Signet-Reading. That same year, she wins the First Prize of the Les Jeunes Artistes de la Côte d’Azur competition. Agnès PEYTOUR then has additional lessons in Monaco with Christine ALLARD and is admitted in 1997 at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussels( Brussels Royal Conservatory) where she studies under Susanna MILDONIAN’S tutorship. In 1998, Agnès PEYTOUR obtains a First Overall Harp Prize and a First Prize in Sight-Reading, followed by a First Prize in Harmony in 1999. 2001 marks the end of her musical studies with a Diplôme Supérieur de Harpe with Honours( equivalent to a Master Degree) as well a First Prize in Chamber Music. In 2002 she is semi-finalist at the 4^th Arpista Ludovico International Harp Competition, in Madrid.

Since 2002, she regularly has lessons with Germaine LORENZINI.

She played in professional orchestras such as the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, the Orchestre National de Belgique, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège and the Orchestre de l’Opéra de Liège.

Agnès PEYTOUR alreday gave numerous recitals in France and abroad.

Indeed, she played in Luxembourg,in Brussels at Maison de la Radio and at the Musical Instruments Museum(MIM).Still in Belgium, at the Festival Monteverdi, Festival de Florenville, Festival Eté Mosan, Festival de Wallonie, Festival des Midis-Minimes ,Festival de Durbuy, Concert de Midi à Louvain-la-Neuve. Furthermore, she played at Rainier III Académie, in Monaco.

In France, she performed in the Flâneries Musicales de Reims, aux Concerts Classiques d’Epinal, in the Festival de Musique du Château de Martigny, in the 3^rd Biennale de Marcigny, in the Nuits Musicales de Mazaugues, in the Festival de Musique Sacrée de Nice, in the Soirées estivales produced by the Conseil Général des Alpes-Maritimes and at the Palais des Congrès in Nice for the musical event : C’est pas classique!

She also played in Bastia, in Paris in the American Church and near Paris in the Petite Malmaison Castle, in Saint-Maximin Basilica and at the Palais des Papes in Avignon.

Since 2008, she formed a duet called Duo NEFELI with another harpist, Primor SLUCHIN.

Agnès Peytour teaches harp at the European Schools of Brussel.

website: http://www.agnespeytour.com/