Last week found Yuja Wang giving a nearly 90-minute recital at Walt Disney Concert Hall. This week French pianist Hélène Grimaud will do the same with a very different program. Her recital takes place on Tuesday, February 26th. She goes to La Jolla’s Baker-Baum Concert Hall on February 28th. She returns to California to perform at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco on March 22nd.
Grimaud, who, in addition to being a superb musician, is also deeply committed to issues of human rights and social change. As a result, this recital will not follow the traditional form commonly found in recitals. Instead Grimaud wants to create a more relaxed, and by extension, more meditative experience.
As she says in the program notes, “My interest is rather in exploring memory as a state of consciousness common to us all, and discover paths and features of that meditation, suggested by music.” This is why she calls the first half of this recital Memory, which is also the name of her most recording.
Here is what is scheduled for the first half of Grimaud’s concert:
Valentine Silvestrov: Bagatelle 1
Debussy: Arabesque No. 1
Silvestrov: Bagatelle II
Satie: Gnossiénne No. 4
Chopin: Nocturne No. 19 in E Minor, Op. 72, No. 1
Satie: Gnossiénne No. 1
Satie: “En y regardant à deux fois” from Pièces froides, Set 2
Debussy: La plus que lente
Chopin: Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17, No. 4
Chopin: Waltz No. 3 in A minor, Op. 34, No. 2
Debussy: “Clair de Lune” from Suite bergamasque
Debussy: Rêverie
Satie: “Passer” from Pièces froides, Set. 2
After the intermission Grimaud will perform Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana, Op. 16. This over 30-minute work was inspired by author Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman’s character Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler. Hoffman’s character is a composer who is spiraling into madness. There were three novels that explored this character: Kreisleriana; Johannes Kreisler, des Kapellmesiters Musikalische Leiden and The Life and Options of the Tomcat Murr together with fragmentary Biography of Kapellmesiter Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper.
If the name Hoffman seems familiar, it is he who inspired Offenbach to write The Tales of Hoffman. He also wrote the book that inspired Tchaikovsky to write The Nutcracker.
There are eight sections in Kreisleriana. Schumann wrote the work in 1838 when he was 28 and trying to marry Clara Wieck. (He would end up marrying her three years later.)
Grimaud has put together a fascinating program. That the first half is more relaxed and then second is more intense, should make for a thoroughly entertaining evening of beautifully played piano music.
For tickets to Walt Disney Concert Hall go here.
For tickets to the Baker-Baum Concert Hall go here.
For tickets to Davies Symphony Hall go here.
Photo of Hélène Grimaud by Mat Hennek/Courtesy of Key Note Artist Management