Inbal Megiddo (Cello) and Rachel Thomson (Piano)

The Globe 2021 continues on Sunday, May 2 with performances by artists of international standing. Inbal Megiddo has given recitals at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Staatsoper in Berlin, and concerto performances with the Berlin Symphony at the Philharmonie. At her New York debut at the Lincoln Center, her playing was hailed by the press as having “magical expression and technical expertise.” Recent recorded releases include recordings for Atoll and Naxos, which were nominated for Best Classical Album at the NZ Music Awards, and a recording of Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano released to critical acclaim. Recent highlights include solo performances with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Bournemouth Symphony, Ukraine Philharmonic, Lithuanian Philharmonic, and Israel Chamber Orchestra, and concert tours throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. In high demand as a teacher, Ms. Megiddo is Senior Lecturer in Cello at the New Zealand School of Music. Ms. Megiddo performs on a superb Fiorini cello, and was awarded use of a Stradivarius cello on loan by the Stradivari Society.

Pianist Rachel Thomson graduated from Victoria University of Wellington before continuing her studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music in the United States, where she gained a doctorate in piano performance. Rachel regularly performs with some of the country’s leading musicians. She has toured on numerous occasions for Chamber Music New Zealand and is a member of various chamber ensembles including the Koru Trio. She has worked as an orchestral pianist with the NZSO, Orchestra Wellington, and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. Rachel is also active as a teacher, adjudicator and accompanist.

Together they will perform a programme which they have called Cello Journey. It begins with a suite of pieces arranged from his Seven Popular Spanish Songs. From different parts of Spain, all the original texts deal with love and courting, whether playful, serious or tragic. The suite finishes with Polo, a fiery flamenco Andalusian dance about the wild desire for revenge on an unfaithful lover.

Two pieces by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich have their origin in the 1935 ballet The Limpid Stream. A directive from Stalin in 1948 castigated Shostakovich along with other Soviet composers for ‘formalist perversions’. From then until Stalin’s death, Shostakovich wrote ‘serious’ music for the desk drawer and publicly produced many film scores and patriotic pieces, and music such as this for popular taste.

The composer Robert Schumann is well known by audiences, but it may be a surprise to them to know that his wife was also a talented composer.
Making her solo debut at 11 years of age, Clara Schumann became one of the most distinguished pianists of her day, noted for performing by memory and creating programmes of musical depth. Her Three Romances for violin and piano were written during a productive year in 1853. The following year her husband Robert was committed to a sanatorium, where he remained until his death a few years later; Clara did not return to composing.

Johannes Brahms was a close friend of Clara and Robert Schumann. His Second Cello Sonata, one of the great pieces written for cello and piano, was written during the productive summer of 1886. There is a heroic sense of struggle between the cello and piano, and when a less than skilled cellist once played this piece with Brahms and complained she couldn’t hear herself over the thick piano scoring, “You were lucky” was Brahms’ sarcastic response.

Admission is by donation recommended from $5.