York Bowen & Rebecca Clarke – Sonatas for viola and piano Hanna Hohti & Anna Kuvaja

• York Bowen (1884 - 1961): Sonata no1 in C-minor for Viola and Piano I:
• 1Bowen: Sonata no1 in C-minor for Viola and Piano I11:02
• 2Bowen: Sonata no1 in C-minor for Viola and Piano II08:32
• 3Bowen: Sonata no1 in C-minor for Viola and Piano III08:57
• Rebecca Clarke (1886 - 1979): Sonata for Viola and Piano I:
• 4Clarke: Sonata for Viola and Piano I08:02
• 5Clarke: Sonata for Viola and Piano II04:19
• 6Clarke: Sonata for Viola and Piano III11:32
• Total Runtime52:24

Info for York Bowen & Rebecca Clarke – Sonatas for viola and piano

This album is an opportunity to hear two different yet related perspectives on early 20th-century repertoire for viola and piano, and on musical life at the time in general. Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) and York Bowen (1884–1961) belonged to the same generation, grew up in the same city and to some extent studied at the same colleges, but they differed in their musical outlook and style.

Hanna Hohti, viola
Anna Kuvaja, piano

Hanna Hohti
enjoys immersing herself in the expressive worlds of different musical eras and creating multifaceted concert programmes designed to appeal to broad audiences.

Alongside her exploration of rarely performed chamber music with Anna Kuvaja on period instru- ments, she is also deeply engaged in the performance of electro- acoustic music. Her solo perfor- mance Seidr, premiered at the 2022 Helsinki Festival, was described in the newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet as an “act of artistic bravery”.

Since 2017, Hanna has expanded the chamber music scene in Tapiola district of the Greater Helsinki region by joining forces with her friends to run a concert series, Kino Soi!, in a 1950s cinema.

Hanna Hohti completed her Master’s degree at the Royal Academy of Music in London under the guidance of Garfield Jackson. Her work has been generously supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the Kone Foundation and the Alfred Kordelin Foundation.

Anna Kuvaja
A versatile soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player, Finnish pianist Anna Kuvaja is also an active fortepianist and an assured performer of contemporary repertoire. Anna has given recitals both at home and abroad, made a number of recordings for the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) and appeared at numerous festivals large and small.

In addition to her career as a concert pianist, Anna has taught at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki since 2010. In 2016, Anna published her first solo album, Fluvial, on the Alba Records label. BBC Music Magazine awarded it a full five stars and described it as “a stunning debut disc… powerful Schubert”. In 2022 Alba released Soiréestücke, a chamber music album with the clarinettist Lauri Sallinen, which was also well- received.

Anna Kuvaja studied piano at the Sibelius Academy with Tuija Hakkila and Liisa Pohjola. She was an exchange student at the CNSM in Paris with Henri Barda and further honed her skills as a member of the Zurich Opera Orchestra academy.

This album contains no booklet.