South Bank Centre, London

Purcell Room
Thursday, 16 April 1987, 7.30pm

Victoria Soames (clarinet)
Julius Drake (piano)

An American in Paris

A Copland Premiere and the complete clarinet and piano works of Les Six

Darius Milhaud: Sonatine
Très rude
Lent
Très rude

Germaine Tailieferre: Arabesque

Arthur Honegger: Sonatine
Modéré
Lent et soutenu
Vif et rythmique

Francis Poulenc: Sonata
Allegro tristamente
Romanza
Allegro con fuoco

Interval

Aaron Copland: Sonata (transcribed by the composer from his 1943 violin & piano sonata) 1st European performance
Andante semplice
Lento
Allegretto giusto

Darius Milhaud: Duo Concertante
Vif – Modéré – Vif

From the programme

Victoria Soames and Julius Drake were both pupils at the Purcell School and have been playing together since their first year at the Royal College of Music, where among other prizes they won the prestigious Frederick Thurston Memorial Prize.

Their debut in November 1981, at London’s South Bank was an unqualified success and the numerous concerts and broadcasts that have followed have established Victoria Soames and Julius Drake as two of the leading chamber musicians of their generation.

Fuure plans include the first European broadcast later this year of the Copland Sonata for BBC Radio 3, and a record of the complete music for clarinet and piano of “Les Six”.

This programme, which marks ten years of playing together as a recital duo, is dedicated in loving memory to the clarenettist Roger Fallows who was Ms Soames’s mentor since she began studying with him in 1972.