Alban Gerhardt & Steven Osborne

Steven Osborne and the cellist Alban Gerhardt have formed an established duo for many years. Their playing at our Britten Happening in 2012 was out of this world.
In this recital they will be bringing the late Beethoven face to face with twentieth-century moderns who in the meantime have become classics. It will once again become apparent just how modern Beethoven already was. Since he had no real predecessors in the genre, Beethoven was free to do what he liked. The sonata for cello and piano was the perfect basis on which to experiment with textures and timbres.
This was something Debussy was keen on too. Though in his case the cello came more clearly to the fore. In the manuscript he noted emphatically that “the pianist should never struggle against the cello, he must accompany it”.
In Schnittke’s first Cello Sonata, the cello and piano are again on an equal footing. Gerhardt and Osborne explore a broad spectrum of dynamics and tonal colour and are not shy of taking it to extremes.