Beatrice Rana, Piano
Performers
Beatrice Rana, Piano
Program
CHOPIN Scherzo No. 1
CHOPIN Scherzo No. 2
CHOPIN Scherzo No. 3
CHOPIN Scherzo No. 4
DEBUSSY Etudes, Book I
STRAVINSKY Three Movements from Pétrouchka
Encores:
SAINT-SAËNS "The Swan" from The Carnival of the Animals (arr. Godowsky)
CHOPIN Prelude in B-flat minor, Op. 28, No. 16
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.Listen to Selected Works
At a Glance
CHOPIN Scherzos
In his four scherzos, as in his contemporaneous polonaises and ballades, Chopin deliberately set out to work on a grander scale than in his earlier waltzes, mazurkas, nocturnes, and other salon pieces. Composed over a period of some eight years, the scherzos illustrate both Chopin’s innovative approach to the keyboard and the extraordinary range and subtlety of his musical language.
DEBUSSY Etudes, Book I
Despite his ties to contemporary visual artists, Debussy bristled at the label “Impressionist.” In his piano etudes and other late works, he distanced himself from the programmatic associations of his earlier music. Himself a distinguished pianist, he asserted that his 12 technically demanding etudes (six in Book I, six in Book II) would “usefully prepare pianists for a better understanding of the fact that the portals of music can only be opened with formidable hands.”
STRAVINSKY Three Movements from Pétrouchka
Pétrouchka was the second of three wildly successful ballets inspired by Russian folklore that made Stravinsky a household name in Paris before World War I. After the war, the composer collaborated with Arthur Rubinstein in creating this brilliantly virtuosic piano suite based on episodes from the ballet. Rubinstein recalled that when he played the work, he tried to make the music “sound as I heard it by the orchestra more than as a piano piece.”