Liana Gourdjia / Matan Porat CHARLES IVES

Since I remember myself, there were sounds of violin and piano. I must have been present during hundreds of hours of scrupulous work, when my grandmother was teaching my sister the violin, long before being aware of what it all really meant. Music was all around me. My mother played the piano. Often the violin students of The Moscow Conservatory came to rehearse chez nous, and that is how I became familiar with every microscopic detail of most violin pieces she had accompanied. My mother loved accompanying, she made everyone feel confident, even in most treacherous passages. We knew she would always wait, or, in any case, do just the right thing in order to support a player. Masterful accompanists are hard to come by; they must be cherished. (Liana Gourdjia) 

Between 1902 and 1916, Charles Ives wrote sonatas for violin and piano referencing more and more frequently popular or religious melodies he heard in daily life, as if to better link serious music and the daily lives of Americans. A rare repertoire, championed by the sparkling Liana Gourdjia, who trained in Moscow, and later studied in Bloomington and Cleveland.