At the Mozarteum in Salzburg they share the classroom; on stage they rediscover the joy of musical dialogue.
Giovanni Gnocchi and Connie Shih are artists who embrace music in all its dimensions. As soloists, chamber musicians, and teachers, they bring to every performance a natural balance between artistic rigour and expressive freedom. Having appeared alongside such distinguished musicians as Martha Argerich, Yo-Yo Ma, Steven Isserlis, Leonidas Kavakos, Janine Jansen and Tabea Zimmermann, they now place their wealth of experience at the service of chamber music for the audience of Unione Musicale.
Their programme brings together three works that reveal different facets of Romanticism. Clara Schumann’s delicate Three Romances open the evening, leading to the radiant lyricism of Brahms’s Sonata Op. 78 and culminating in Rachmaninoff’s sweeping Sonata Op. 19, one of the supreme masterpieces of the cello and piano repertoire.
Three works, each with its own distinctive voice, united by a common thread: the search for an ever more profound and equal dialogue between the two instruments, transformed into two musical characters that seek one another, listen to one another, and ultimately become one.
