Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piano
Pierre Boulez Centenary
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Pierre-Laurent Aimard: Also performing , and , and May 4.
Performers
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piano
Program
BARTÓK Selections from Mikrokosmos
BOULEZ Douze notations
RAVEL Gaspard de la nuit
BOULEZ Piano Sonata No. 1
SCHOENBERG Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23
BOULEZ Piano Sonata No. 3
Encore:
WEBERN Variations, Op. 27
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately 100 minutes, including one 20-minute intermission.Listen to Selected Works
At a Glance
BARTÓK Selections from Mikrokosmos
A classic of the pedagogical repertoire, the 153 short piano exercises of Bartók’s Mikrokosmos have found a home in both the practice studio and the concert hall. Each of the eight pieces on this afternoon’s program focuses on a different “musical or technical” problem.
BOULEZ Douze notations
At age 20, Pierre Boulez composed these dozen highly compressed miniatures after being introduced to 12-tone technique by his teacher at the Paris Conservatoire. Premiered at the end of World War II, they reflect his belief that “music should be collective hysteria and spells, violently of the present time.”
RAVEL Gaspard de la nuit
Inspired by the fantastical poetry of Aloysius Bertrand, Gaspard de la nuit illustrates Ravel’s ambition to “say with notes what a poet expresses with words.” The last of the three pieces, “Scarbo,” is one of the most technically challenging works in the piano literature.
BOULEZ Piano Sonata No. 1
A slightly later student work by the future giant of modernism, this short, two-movement sonata combines the formal rigor of Schoenbergian 12-tone writing with the freely expressive spontaneity and timbral subtlety that would come to characterize Boulez’s mature works.
SCHOENBERG Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23
Some 15 years after he abandoned traditional tonality in his pathbreaking atonal music, Arnold Schoenberg turned another corner in this landmark set of short piano pieces. The last piece, an idiosyncratic waltz, may be the earliest example of strict serialism in music history.
BOULEZ Piano Sonata No. 3
Inspired by literary models, Boulez embraced the open-ended principle of “chance” music, or indeterminacy, in this unfinished sonata. “Composing would be immeasurably boring if one demanded nothing more, so to speak, than organized guided tours with prearranged stops,” he said.