Gözde Yaşar (cello) and İnci Yakar Birol (piano) bring together the cello sonatas of César Franck and his pupil Vincent d’Indy, presenting the album as a reflection on continuity: of form, of thought and of life itself. D’Indy joined Franck’s organ class at the Paris Conservatoire in 1872, later became his biographer, and carried forward the cyclic principle, in which shared thematic motifs return across all the movements of a work.
D’Indy’s Cello Sonata in D major, Op. 84, composed in 1924 and 1925, takes the shape of a Baroque suite, with an Entrée, Gavotte, Air and Gigue. Franck’s Cello Sonata in A major, FWV 8, written in 1886 as a wedding gift for the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, is heard in the arrangement by the cellist Jules Delsart, authorised by Franck himself; a motif of falling thirds recurs through all four movements. The programme closes with Mélancolie, a short piece based on one of Franck’s solfège exercises and published posthumously in 1911.
