ConcertPulse
Stefanovich & SDLW
Elbphilharmonie, Kleiner Saal (Hamburg)
It’s about logic, thematic work and the highest artistic demands: the sonata is to the solo instrument what the symphony is to the orchestra and the string quartet to chamber music – the king among genres. »And this is precisely what interests me,« declares star pianist Tamara Stefanovich. »Why do we take this one form for centuries and redress it time and again?« In her concert in the Elbphilharmonie Recital Hall, she contrasts two piano sonatas from the 20th century by Dmitri Shostakovich and Pierre Boulez before she rounds off the evening by improvising together with her jazz ensemble SDLW – an exciting piece of bridge building between form and freedom. Shostakovich’s former piano teacher described his first piano sonata as a »sonata for metronome to the accompaniment of piano«. Experimental, harsh and dissonant, this virtuoso work conveys a feeling of constant movement and, at the same time, grapples with the Russian and western avant-garde. It was a showpiece of the then 20 year old, who repeatedly played it in concert himself. Pierre Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata also fits the »Future« theme of the Hamburg International Music Festival: it is not only extremely demanding, but also includes aleatory elements – composing by chance. Boulez thereby forever departs from the traditional form because, after this work, he was never again to refer back to musical forms of the past in his compositions.