Dialogue
PROGRAMME
I. STRAVINSKY Septet
H. VILLA-LOBOS Quintette en forme de Choros
F. POULENC Sextet for piano and winds
L. VIERNE Piano Quintet
Leif Ove Andsnes piano
Musicians of the MCO
ABOUT THIS CONCERT
Paris in the 1920s experienced one of the most exciting times in its cultural history. Europe was recovering from World War I, and the Parisian intelligentsia demanded, and expected, new approaches to music and other art forms. Tonight's program features works that reflect both the tragedy of the "Great War," as it was called in France, and the general, exhuberant feeling of having to "seize the day" that characterized the decade which followed it.
Francis Poulenc's Sextet for Piano and Winds immediately draws the listener in with its rapid pace and lighthearted, jazzy tone, not a far step from Gershwin's An American in Paris written only four years earlier. Louis Vierne's Piano Quintet, on the other hand, was written in 1917, after the composer’s son Jacques had died in the war. In the Paris premiere in 1921, Vierne's famous student Nadia Boulanger played the piano part. Igor Stravinsky had also moved to France from Switzerland in 1920; however, his Septet for clarinet, French horn, bassoon, piano, violin, viola, and cello, was written at a later stage in his life in the USA. The piece is one much loved by the MCO and Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, as it particularly emphasizes the continuous dialogue between the piano and the other instruments involved.
Andsnes and the MCO have been close musical partners for many years, producing several internationally acclaimed CDs of the Beethoven and some Mozart piano concertos. In the first days of March 2025, they will, on several occasions, share the stage of Musikwoche Hitzacker, a well-established festival in northern Germany whose artistic direction the MCO took over in 2024.
photo (c) Gregor Hohenberg
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