Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays Mozart

Pierre-Laurent Aimard II

Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata is one of the 20th century’s most monumental piano sonatas – a flood of sound that is ludicrously demanding, with three systems of notation instead of the usual two. A challenge – even for an internationally accalimed pianist like Pierre-Laurent Aimard. The sonata makes reference to the American transcendentalist movement, for which the town of Concord was akin to a Weimar of the USA: it was here, in the middle of the 19th century, that writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne all lived. A concentration of talent that is reminiscent of Vienna in the early days of new music, which was central to the evening’s other featured composer: Arnold Schönberg.

Petr Popelka & Pierre-Laurent Aimard

The concert will be broadcast on 17 March 2024 at 8.03 pm on Deutschlandfunk Kutlur.

Jonathan Nott and Pierre-Laurent Aimard

He performed in the circus, was celebrated as a pianist, was made to do forced labour under Stalin – György Cziffra’s life was full of successes and tragedies. These are portrayed in a radical and touching way in Cziffra Psodia, a piano concerto composed by fellow Hungarian Peter Eötvös. The soloist for this performance is Pierre-Laurent Aimard; Jonathan Nott conducts. In the same programme, Charles Ives’ Fourth Symphony takes us into early American modernism: a visionary collage of hymns, marches and fugues that explores fundamental questions of existence, performed by a powerful orchestra with piano and choir.

Jonathan Nott and Pierre-Laurent Aimard

He performed in the circus, was celebrated as a pianist, was made to do forced labour under Stalin – György Cziffra’s life was full of successes and tragedies. These are portrayed in a radical and touching way in Cziffra Psodia, a piano concerto composed by fellow Hungarian Peter Eötvös. The soloist for this performance is Pierre-Laurent Aimard; Jonathan Nott conducts. In the same programme, Charles Ives’ Fourth Symphony takes us into early American modernism: a visionary collage of hymns, marches and fugues that explores fundamental questions of existence, performed by a powerful orchestra with piano and choir.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard & Tamara Stefanovich

PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD & GEORGE BENJAMIN

When experiencing Pierre Boulez’s First Piano Sonata, one should leave all listening habits behind and become a blank page, as the composer himself intended to be—says Pierre-Laurent Aimard, long considered one of the most erudite performers of Boulez’s music. He presents this radically unconventional 1946 work together with George Benjamin’s Shadowlines and a new piece for piano duet, for which he is joined by the composer.

Symphoniker Hamburg / Pierre-Laurent Aimard / Sylvain Cambreling

Carl Maria von Weber composed »Oberon, or the Elf-King’s Oath« for the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, London. The opera about knights, fairies and harems never became established in the repertoire, but the overture is cherished as one of the finest examples of Weber’s talent as an orchestral composer. It is followed by Béla Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2. According to the composer, this piano concerto was intended as a counterpiece to his first: »less difficult for the orchestra and more pleasing in its thematic material«. And indeed, the work really does have a softer, less mysterious surface that invites more virtuosic music-making. The concert closes with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4: a real summer symphony with a sunny mood. In Beethoven’s day, the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung wrote: »On the whole the work is cheerful, intelligible and very engaging, and is more akin to this master’s justly popular First and Second Symphonies than to his Fifth and Sixth.« They were right – this Fourth Symphony really has very little in common with the subsequent »Fate« Symphony. Its appeal lies in its classical, joyful carefreeness.

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Pierre-Laurent Aimard / David Robertson

»My music has to be short. Short! In two notes: not to build, but to express!« Arnold Schönberg once emphasised. The Austrian composer also favoured deliberate reduction in his only piano concerto. Schönberg based it on a single, frequently varied tone row, thereby achieving expressive nuances ranging from puckish cheekiness to decided drama. Although the inventor of twelve-tone music celebrates his 150th birthday in 2024, his compositions still sound as modern today as ever. So it’s no wonder that the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra is dedicating a special focus to Arnold Schönberg this season.

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Pierre-Laurent Aimard / David Robertson

»My music has to be short. Short! In two notes: not to build, but to express!« Arnold Schönberg once emphasised. The Austrian composer also favoured deliberate reduction in his only piano concerto. Schönberg based it on a single, frequently varied tone row, thereby achieving expressive nuances ranging from puckish cheekiness to decided drama. Although the inventor of twelve-tone music celebrates his 150th birthday in 2024, his compositions still sound as modern today as ever. So it’s no wonder that the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra is dedicating a special focus to Arnold Schönberg this season.