Brahms Duo!

Marie-Elisabeth Hecker made her entry into the ‘big leagues’ by winning first prize in the Rostropovich Competition in Paris back in 2005. Her international career was simultaneously launched on the back of this great success. Born in 1987 in Zwickau, the young cellist has studied with Steven Iserlis, Bernard Greenhouse and even Gary Hoffman. She has performed as a soloist with the Russian Symphony Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Kremerata Baltica, the Mariinsky Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Munich and Dresden Philharmonic Orchestras, the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris… the list goes on. Her experience has seen her work with conductors such as Yuri Temirkanov, Yuri Bashmet, Gidon Kremer, Valery Gergiev, Fabio Luisi, Marek Janowski, Emmanuel Krivine, Christian Thielemann or even Daniel Barenboim. Here, with her musical partner (and husband) pianist Martin Helmchen for their first album as a duo; the two musicians met at the Lockenhaus Festival at which time they performed another one of Brahms sonatas: Proust's Madeleine! More than twenty years separate the two sonatas for cello and piano, the first from 1862 – the composer had not yet turned 30 – and the second from 1886, by which time he had nothing left to prove to anyone. The team of Hecker-Helmchen thoroughly master this repertoire. A real coup for this first album as a duo.

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