Martha Argerich Festival

»Sometimes listening to poor music can be a source of good ideas.« The laconic remark stems from Prokofiev while he was listening to a violin duet that went wrong. Thus in 1932 he simply sat down and wrote a Sonata for Two Violins himself, which his son described as »lyrical, playful, passionate and full of imagination«. His fellow Russian Rachmaninov composed his Cello Sonata after a serious crisis in 1901, at a time of new personal happiness: he had got engaged to his great love Natalia. Now he urgently needed money to pay for the wedding, and the result was a score full of rhythmic energy and rapturous lyricism.