ConcertPulse
Guest performance
Philharmonie Berlin, Chamber Music Hall (Berlin)
Filters
Was the world a better place in the Romantic era? Alexander Melnikov explores this question through his piano recital – following the theme of our Biennale entitled Paradise lost? On the threat to nature. With Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy, Melnikov leads you through idyllic landscapes and man-made chasms, reveals the poetry of Schumann’s Waldszenen, and shows atmospheric images of nature in Franz Liszt’s piano works. The forest appears here as a place of retreat – from the self and from encroaching industrialisation. By contrast, Alexander Scriabin prophesies the destruction of the world in the grand conflagration of Vers la flamme.
In celebration of the Pierre Boulez centenary, Tamara Stefanovich performs the composer’s Second Piano Sonata of 1948, one of his defining early works. Known internationally for her interpretations of modernist and contemporary repertoire, the pianist pairs it with a selection of avant-garde experiments on the sonata form from the early 20th century—including Scriabin’s mystic “Black Mass,” written in 1911, Busoni’s fantastical, atonal Sonatina seconda, and youthful works by Alban Berg, and Dmitri Shostakovich.