The South Korean Suhyun Kim (viola) studies concert performance at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main, the Ukrainian Ievgeniia Iermachkova (piano)...

The South Korean Suhyun Kim (viola) studies concert performance at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main, the Ukrainian Ievgeniia Iermachkova (piano) is a lecturer at the International Music Academy Anton Rubinstein in Düsseldorf.

BRIDGE: Pensiero exhibits that brooding melancholy mood characteristic of the composer's chamber music. The Allegro appassionato is dominated in its frame sections by a moment of rousing energy and rapturous sonority, which contrast with a nostalgic-sounding middle section.

ENESCU: His concert piece for viola and piano was written in 1906 for a competition. It is a lyrical rhapsody whose viola part, however, demands virtuoso skills from the player - Enescu himself had been a violinist (and pianist) prodigy. The one-movement work mixes elements of French impressionism with those of Romanian folklore.

R. SCHUMANN: Schumann composed the two-part work for "pianoforte and horn", published in July 1849 as Adagio and Allegro op. 70 by Friedrich Kistner in Leipzig, but already there he left the option of a version with "ad libitum violoncello or violin" as an alternative.

CLARKE: Rebecca Clarke is today considered one of the most important British composers of the interwar period. Trained as a violinist and especially as a violist - she was a pupil of Lionel Tertis, the most important violist of his era - she was one of the first women to be appointed to a professional orchestra, the Queen's Hall Orchestra, which opened the "Proms" concert series. She submitted her three-movement Sonata for Viola and Piano, written in 1919, to the composition competition in Berkeley for the "Coolidge International Prize" and won second prize among a large number of competitors, although it was probably only the unusual circumstance that she was a woman that led to the first prize being awarded to the composer Ernest Bloch.