Arne Zeller & Jacopo Giovannini CHAMBER RECITAL Presented by Liszt Academy

Arne Zeller returns to familiar, almost home territory for his Budapest recital, as a monumental milestone in his career was winning first prize and the Audience Award at the 2025 International Cello Competition held in the Hungarian capital. Alongside his regular chamber partner, pianist Jacopo Giovannini, he presents works by two German Romantic masters linked by friendship, as well as an Anglo-Saxon thread featuring 20th-century composer Frank Bridge and the contemporary Thomas Adès.

Mendelssohn’s Cello Sonata No. 2 (1843) is best known for its slow movement, where the almost hymnic piano solo reflects the chorale style of Johann Sebastian Bach, a composer who profoundly influenced Mendelssohn. This is followed by Adès’s highly acclaimed composition Lieux retrouvés, and then the Cello Sonata in D minor by Frank Bridge – teacher of Benjamin Britten – written under the somber shadow of World War I.

The evening concludes with Schumann’s only work specifically composed and published for cello and piano, the Five Pieces in Folk Style, Op. 102. Drawing inspiration from literature as he so often did, the composer titled the first movement after Goethe: Vanitas vanitatum: Mit Humor.