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Cellist Rhonda Rider and pianist Judith Gordan join forces to present the Cello Sonatas of Gabriel Fauré. The Cello Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 109 is the first of the two cello sonatas by Gabriel Fauré. Composed in 1917 at Saint-Raphaël and Paris, it was premiered on 10 November 1917 at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique by Gérard Hekking as the cellist and Alfred Cortot as the pianist. At the same concert, the Second Violin Sonata was also premiered. The dedicatee of the work was the cellist Louis Hasselmans, who gave a second performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1918. In early 1921 Fauré had been commissioned by the French government to write a funeral march for a ceremony to be held on 5 May at Les Invalides to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of Napoleon. The sombre theme he composed for it remained in his mind and, as he said, "turned itself into a sonata": The Cello Sonata No. 2 in G minor, Op. 117. By then the composer was frail, and his ill health delayed the completion of the outer movements until late in the year. On 10 November Fauré wrote to his friend and benefactor Charles Martin Loeffler asking him to accept the dedication of the cello sonata, which he had completed that same day.