| Wednesday 10 March 2021 | 19:30 |
| Louis Schwizgebel | Piano |
Former BBC New Generation Artist Louis Schwizgebel is a pianist of rare and refined skills. He brings music from three piano traditions to his Queen Elizabeth Hall recital.
In his sets of Etudes Tableaux (Study Pictures), Sergei Rachmaninov set out to create ‘musical evocations of external visual stimuli.’
The results are not so much pictures in music as meticulously crafted films in miniature.
Op.33 brings us snowstorms and moonlit evenings. Op.39 goes even deeper, expressing inconsolable grief and spirited dreams. Never has the word ‘study’ been more inappropriate – this is music that fills its small worlds with emotion.
The same can be said of Schumann’s Etudes Symphoniques (Symphonic Studies), the set a deep reflection on a tune associated with one of the composer’s early loves.
The music contains Schumann’s intimate thoughts and outward desires, taking in both the introvert and extrovert sides of his personality. It grows in symphonic stature as it proceeds.
Louis Schwizgebel, an articulate young pianist from Switzerland, plays the version of the work with the five deleted variation movements restored.
He begins his recital with Debussy, a pianist who dreamed of hammerless pianos able to conjure up the sensual and suggestive world of impressionistic paintings.
