By Signe Hammer
Pro Musica is excited to introduce one of the world’s most compelling young musicians, 24-year-old cellist Gabriel Martins, accompanied on piano by Víctor Santiago Asunción. They will play at St. Paul’s Church on Sunday, November 13, at 5pm.
Martins has won top prizes at the Concert Artists Guild/Young Classical Artists Trust International Auditions, the Sphinx Competition, the David Popper International Cello Competition, the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians, and the Schadt String Competition, as well as the Orford Music Award and the Prague Spring Czech Music Fund Prize. His recent performances include London’s Wigmore Hall, Moscow Conservatory’s Great Hall, Montreal’s Maison Symphonique, and appearances with multiple symphony orchestras in the United States. Strad Magazine declared his January New York City recital debut “a deeply moving experience…flawlessly played,” and Classic FM named him one of their “30 under 30” rising stars.
Martins, of American and Brazilian heritage, grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, playing the cello from the age of five. As a Presidential Scholar at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, he studied with Ralph Kirshbaum, then earned a master’s degree at the New England Conservatory of Music with Laurence Lesser. He lives in South Carolina with his partner, violinist Geneva Lewis, who debuted here in January. He plays a Francesco Ruggieri cello made in Cremona around 1690, and a François Nicolas Voirin bow made in Paris around 1880.
He’ll play a deeply romantic program, starting with Schubert’s Sonata in A minor, “Arpeggione.” In his last years, the terminally ill Schubert composed his most sublime masterpieces, including this sonata for his friend Vincenz Schuster, an arpeggione virtuoso. A six-stringed cross between cello and guitar, the arpeggione did not endure, but the sonata did, played now on the four-stringed cello.
Next up will be Mendelssohn’s Sonata No. 2 in D Major, dedicated to the Russian-Polish cellist Count Mateusz Wielhorski. The third of the sonata’s four movements mirrors Mendelssohn’s continuing fascination with the music of Bach, which he had resurrected from obscurity by rediscovering the manuscript of the “St. Matthew Passion” and presenting it to an enthusiastic public.
After the intermission, we’ll hear Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, or “Fantasy Pieces,” composed in two days, originally for clarinet and piano. Schumann liked the title—which suggests a Romantic lack of formal restriction—so much that he used it for two other piano pieces.
Lastly, we’ll hear Brahms’ Sonata No. 2 in F Major, written for, dedicated to, and premiered by Robert Hausmann, the cellist of Joseph Joachim’s String Quartet. At her January concert for Pro Musica, Geneva Lewis played the priceless Stradivarius violin on which Joachim himself had premiered Brahms’ Violin Concerto. The bold, fiery, passionate, heroic first theme of Sonata No. 2 is the epitome of Romanticism.
Tickets for the concerts at St. Paul’s are 400 and 600 pesos donation each and are on sale through our website and at the concert 45 minutes before performance time. Details of all Pro Musica concerts and Patron membership are on our website https://www.promusicasma.org/, or contact us at promusicasma@aol.com.
Pro Musica Concert Series
Gabriel Martins, cello
Víctor Santiago Asunción, piano
Sun, Nov 13, 5pm
St. Paul’s Church, Calle Cardo
Tickets 400 and 600 pesos
