DeepDiscount.com

In June 2009, Francis Pott attended a performance of his Cello Sonata at the

Mananan Arts Festival. Intrigued by the mysterious Milner Tower on Bradda

Head, guarding the entrance to the bay, he walked up to it on a blustery

summer's day. By the time he returned, ideas for a companion sonata for

viola and piano had come into being. Not long before this, the Japanese-born,

London-based violist Yuko Inoue had requested that Francis consider writing

her a piece. The Sonata that eventually resulted is a sweepingly romantic halfhour

work embodying the composer's response to the dramatic southwestern

coastline of the Isle of Man and, in particular, to two of the various towers

dotted along it's length: Milner Tower and Corrin's Tower. On this new CD,

the Sonata is paired with "Einzige Tage" ("Unrepeatable Days"), a cycle

featuring song settings inspired by the Russian poets Boris Pasternak and

Francis POTT Anna Akhmatova.