Sarah Watkins and Andrew Beer return for Greytown Concert

Greytown Music Group audiences may recall last year’s concert given by Sarah and Andrew, along with Russian cellist Lev Sivkov, and will be looking forward to their return for a duo concert on 22 August.

During the lockdown they both had to come to grips with the unknown world of on-line lessons and music making. Together they made  a split-screen video of Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances, with Sarah recording first, and Andrew adding the violin part. Sarah says  “I am grateful to have acquired some new skills, but am even more grateful to be back making music in real life again!”  And Andrew added  “We both really missed the joy of chamber music collaboration in the same room, where we can react to each other’s moves instantaneously.”

This will be Sarah and Andrew’s first live duo concert since the lockdown. They describe the first half of their programme as “a potpourri of tons of great music!” It includes two beautiful and lyrical pieces by NZ composers, Dance by Josiah Carr, written for the pair, and Rhapsody by Anthony Ritchie. They will also play Five Melodies by Prokofiev, and Three Romances by Clara Schumann, one of the few female composers of her era.

The second half of the concert will be Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. This was named after violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, to whom it was ultimately dedicated, but who thoroughly disliked the piece and refused to play it, describing it as “outrageously unintelligible”. Michael Houston has described the sonata as “Simply the most devastating concert piece among the violin sonatas that Beethoven wrote”. Composed in 1803, it allows the players to let fly with their skill and passion like no previous sonata for violin and piano.

Sarah Watkins and Andrew Beer – Piano and Violin: 4pm on Saturday 22 August at 57 Wood St, Greytown. Admission $25, students $10. Bookings advisable – contact Ed and Juliet Cooke on 06 304 9497, or efjacooke@gmail.com.