Jun He - Violin & Guy Donaldson - Piano In Music From France

The Globe Theatre Sunday Matinee series proudly presents the first local concert by a violinist who has established a performing career on Europe and China and is now resident in Palmerston North.

Jun He started to play the violin when she was four years old and initially studied violin performance at the Xinghai Conservatory in Guangzhou, China. From 1998 she studied at the Salzburg Mozarteum and went on to win the first prize in the Alpe Adria International Competition in Gorizia, Italy. Jun graduated with a Master of Arts in violin performance at the Mozarteum Salzburg in 2005. In the following year, she taught violin performance in the Private University of Hualian China, until her move to New Zealand. In 2014 Jun graduated from the NZ School of Music with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in violin performance. She later regularly played in the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra until her move to Palmerston North. Currently Jun is leader of the Manawatu Sinfonia.

Sharing the stage with Jun will be pianist Guy Donaldson Guy Donaldson received his formative piano instruction from Maurice Collier, and then at Canterbury University with Maurice Till. In 1984 he studied in London with Paul Hamburger and Roger Vignoles. Guy was a senior lecturer in music education at Massey until 2004, when he took leave to pursue his passion for performance and music teaching. He is active in the Manawatu as a teacher, adjudicator, piano soloist, accompanist, chamber music player and music coach, and was for 30 years music director of the Renaissance Singers.

The concert will feature music from France with sonatas for violin and piano by Maurice Ravel and Cesar Franck, and two piano pieces by Claude Debussy, including his best-known piece Clair de Lune or Moonlight.

The Ravel sonata was inspired by his awareness that the two instruments are essentially quite different. He chose to write a piece in which the instruments are treated as equals but maintain distinct identities. The second movement of the piece is inspired by the Blues, but its character arises essentially from the piano’s unsympathetic response to the violin’s sadness. The violin responds in the third movement with a dazzling show of virtuosity which leaves the piano content with jaunty accompanying rhythms.

While Debussy was a relatively young man when he wrote the pieces featured in this concert Cesar Franck was 64 when he wrote his violin sonata and was still a fairly obscure figure in the French musical world. It was this piece that established him as a significant French composer, and remains a firm favourite amongst violinists and concert audiences alike for its melodic beauty, its exciting virtuosity and its unique character.

Admission is by donation, recommended from $5