Faculty Cello Recital - Amy Catron, cello Sophie Wang, piano and Anne Katherine Ragsdale, piano

Faculty Cello Recital - Amy Catron, cello Sophie Wang, piano and Anne Katherine Ragsdale, piano

This program features a world premiere of Elezovic's "Eclipse of Lyric" and two cornerstone works of the 20th-century Russian cello repertoire: "Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata in D minor," "Op. 40 (1934)" and Sergei Prokofiev’s "Cello Sonata in C major, Op. 119 (1949)." Though both composers worked under the pressures of Soviet artistic policy, their musical voices are strikingly different. Shostakovich’s sonata blends Romantic lyricism and Beethovenian structure with emotional intensity shaped by a deeply personal period in his life. Prokofiev’s sonata, written near the end of his life after his return to the Soviet Union, was composed at a time when many of his works were banned from performance. Approved for public premiere, the first movement bears the epigraph, “Mankind—that has a proud sound.”