James Ehnes, violin & Orion Weiss, piano

Renowned recitalist James Ehnes makes his Duke Performances debut with pianist Orion Weiss in a programme of violin sonatas from across two centuries. Ehnes, 'a violinist in a class of his own' (The Times), leads with a light, lyrical sonatina by Schubert, before moving on to Prokofiev's Sonata No. 2 in D Major, which is both virtuosic and expressive due to the fact that it was originally written for flute. The pair will then turn their attention to Sonatine, a recent work by Aaron Jay Kernis, one of the youngest composers to have ever been awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Kernis and Ehnes are longterm collaborators, having won a Grammy together in 2019 for the violinist's recording of the Kernis's Violin Concerto, which BBC Music Magazine praised as being an 'incredibly powerful live performance, the taxing violin part superbly executed.' Stepping back again to the 19th century, Saint-Saëns's First Sonata concludes the evening, a piece first premiered in 1885 with the composer himself at the piano.

- Freya Parr