Patricia Kopatchinskaja - Pierrot Lunaire - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Alex Vizorek revisits Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals. The French composer never imagined that his bestiary would become one of the most famous works in musical history, a staple repertory piece on a par with Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. The Belgian comedian and actor has rewritten the text of this 'grand zoological fantasy', which he narrates here alongside Duo Jatekok and the Orchestre National de Lille under the direction of Lucie Leguay. The work's 'crazy and poetic drollery' takes in the 'Royal March of the Lion', the 'Hens and Cocks', the mysterious 'Hemiones', the motley procession of 'Turtles', 'Elephant' and 'Kangaroos', the famous 'Aquarium' which gave the Cannes Festival it's signature tune, and of course the celebrated 'Swan'. 'When human beings keep their distance, animals are happy', concludes Alex Vizorek. To celebrate the centenary of Saint-Saëns's death in 1921, Duo Jatekok also presents another of his biggest hits, the Danse macabre, in it's version for two pianos. Naïri Badal and Adélaïde Panaget, the orchestra and Lucie Leguay bring this colorful parade to a close with Poulenc's flamboyant Concerto for Two Pianos, premiered at the Tenth Venice Biennale in 1932.

George Antheil called himself a 'Pianist-Futurist'. A lover of speed, cars and airplanes, the American composer settled in the Paris of the Années Folles, where he frequented Picasso and Stravinsky, and composed works such as Sonate sauvage and Jazz Sonata, which caused a scandal during a concert in Budapest, he even brandished a Chicago gangster-style pistol to restore silence in the hall... He hero-worshipped Beethoven, whose pieces he played in the first part of his recitals before moving onto his own music. In 1933, he returned to the United States where he met John Cage and Morton Feldman. Patkop and the young Finnish pianist Joonas Ahonen - whom The Times, following what the journalist described as 'one of those concerts you remember for ever', presented as the violinist's 'doppelgänger'! - pay tribute to the 'Bad Boy of Music'.

Born in Budapest in 1975 and based in Germany, composer Márton Illés studied with Detlev Müller-Siemens and Wolfgang Rihm. In 2020, he composed the violin concerto Vont-tér for Patricia Kopatchinskaja, a long-time partner who performs his music with total commitment. InchShe gives the impression that music can be tactile, truly three-dimensional, to the point that you could almost touch it, that each gesture has it's own colour, temperature, smell, taste,Inch says Illés. Sírt-tér, Inchspace filled with tears,Inch is a cello concerto InchI make it moan, scream or even roar hysterically in order to draw out the vocal qualities capable of communicating human pain.Inch In Nicolas Altstaedt, InchI found the ideal performer, who grasps the dark drama of this subject with existential intuition and makes it resonate with primitive force.Inch Rajzok I consists of tuning the strings of 24 instruments to different quarter-tone intervals. A very unusual and fascinating total scordatura. In Three Sketches, electronic music blends with the sound of the violin, multiplying the sensations and sound textures. Fascinated by the human psyche and the processes that take place in the human body, Illés develops music that lives, speaks, and breathes.