Ravel’s unknown, tender sonata fragment, Poulenc’s dramatic, sad violin sonata and Prokofiev’s dark sonata in F Minor. Guro Kleven Hagen and Marianna Shirinyan have chosen...

Ravel’s unknown, tender sonata fragment, Poulenc’s dramatic, sad violin sonata and Prokofiev’s dark sonata in F Minor. Guro Kleven Hagen and Marianna Shirinyan have chosen a dream repertoire for their first release together. The album’s first piece derives from a sonata written by Ravel in 1897 at the age of 22 – the same age as Hagen – which was discarded and not rediscovered until 1975. In this movement, many of the shifts and the poetic expression that became Ravel’s trademark are apparent. In 1942/43, while his country suffered from horrible war, Francis Poulenc wrote his only published violin sonata. Premiered by David Oistrakh in 1946, Sergei Prokofiev’s first violin sonata concludes the program. The artists write: “The choice of these three sonatas, written during two utterly different sets of circumstances, gives a natural “war and peace” theme to the album. With this in mind, we chose the title “Fait pleurer les songes,” translated into Norwegian as “Far drommene til a grate” – “Makes dreams weep” The title also reflects Poulenc’s violin sonata, where the second movement has the subtitle “La guitar fait pleurer les songes” (the guitar makes dreams weep), taken from a poem by the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca. The sonata is dedicated to Lorca, who was murdered during the Spanish civil war. Dreams can be dissolved into tears during the horrors of war. In the same way, as in these three sonatas by Ravel, Poulenc and Prokofiev, music has the ability to make us daydream and to recall our tears and string emotions.” (Guro Kleven Hagen and Marianna Shirinyan)