Concert Calendar

• Johann Sebastian Bach: Prelude and Fugue BWV 848 n. 3 in C-sharp major
• Ludwig van Beethoven: 32 Variations in C minor WoO 80
• Muzio Clementi: Piano Sonata op. 40 n. 2 in B minor
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Bagatelle op. 126 n. 4 in B minor
• Sergei Prokofiev: Piano Sonata n. 6 op. 82 in A major

• Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana op. 16
• Franz Liszt: Ungarian Rhapsodie No. 12 C-sharp minor S. 244
• Johannes Brahms: Sextett No. 1 B-flat major

• Johannes Brahms: horn trio E-flat major
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: piano quartett No. 1 G minor KV 478
• Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: string octet E-flat major

It took decades for Beethoven’s monumental ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata (op. 106) to become a permanent fixture of the concert repertoire, thanks to Liszt and his pupils. Echoes of op. 106 can still be heard in Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata, op. 1. Much the same can be said of Robert Schumann’s studies of Bach, which reverberate in the fugues of his op. 72. Yet György Kurtág’s eight short piano pieces, as concise as Webern yet beholden to Bartók, met with consternation and puzzlement at their Darmstadt première in 1960, long preventing him from being recognised as one of the most headstrong composers of our time. The young pianist Tomoki Kitamura is no stranger to classical audiences, having won Bonn’s International Telekom Beethoven Competition in 2017.

Programm:

• György Kurtág: Eight Piano Pieces, op. 3 (1960)
• Robert Schumann: Four Fugues for piano, op. 72 (1845)
• Franz Liszt: ‘Nuages gris’ for piano,, S 199 (1881)
• Franz Liszt: »R.W. – Venezia« für Klavier, S 201 (1883)
• Franz Liszt: ‘La lugubre gondola’ no. 1 for piano, S 200/1 (1882)
• Alban Berg: Piano Sonata,, op. 1 (1908/09)
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata no. 29 in B-flat major,, op. 106 ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata) (1817–19)

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)