Tomoki Kitamura, the second prizewinner of Bonn’s International Telekom Beethoven Competition in 2017, returns to the scene of his triumph with an unusual ‘nocturnal’ programme that reads like a projection of Robert Schumann’s early and very late romantic ’Night Pieces‘ (opp. 23 and 133) into the 20th century. It opens with Helmut Lachenmann’s ‘Wiegenmusik’ (cradle music), which gradually evolves, after initial passages of density, into a state of complete tranquillity. This state can be deceptive, as becomes particularly clear in the ’Night Pieces‘ of Holliger and Hosokawa, or less threatening as in ‘The Night’s Music’, the central movement of Béla Bartók’s ‘Out of Doors’ suite. The programme comes to an end with Schumann’s ‘Gesänge der Frühe’ (Songs of Early Morning). Like Beethoven’s ‘Pastorale’, these five late piano pieces are not so much depictions of nature as expressions of subjective ‘feelings’ at the approach of dawn.
Programm:
- Helmut Lachenmann: »Wiegenmusik« für Klavier (1963)
- Robert Schumann: »Nachtstücke« für Klavier op. 23 (1839)
- Heinz Holliger: »Elis«. Drei Nachtstücke für Klavier (1961/66)
- Béla Bartók: »Im Freien«. Fünf Stücke für Klavier Sz 81 (1926)
- Toshio Hosokawa: »Nacht Klänge« für Klavier (1994/96)
- Bent Sørensen: »Und die Sonne geht auf« für Klavier
- Robert Schumann: »Gesänge der Frühe«. Fünf Stücke für Klavier op. 133 (1853)
