Ribble Valley International Piano Week

 
Peter Donohoe CBE & Martin Roscoe
Wednesday 12th July 2023, 7.30pm
The Croston Theatre, Westholme School, Blackburn, BB2 6QU
 
Mozart                             Sonata in D major for 2 pianos, K. 448
Saint-Saëns                      Variations on a theme of Beethoven, Op.35
Debussy                           En blanc et noir
Rachmaninov                  Suite No.2 for Two Pianos, Op. 17
 
It is a delight to open the 2023 Ribble Valley International Piano Week with return of Peter Donohoe, joined by Martin Roscoe in a nowadays rare evening of music for two pianos. The duo will begin their programme with Mozart’s Sonata in D major, K. 448 which is an example of Mozart at his most galant.  Within the framework of its finely crafted classical structure is music of pure joy – graceful, songful, elegant, and virtuosic. Not surprisingly, he made a masterwork his first (and only) time working in the form!


Saint-Saëns’ output of solo piano music spanned almost 70 years, mainly salon pieces such as waltzes and caprices; he never wrote a piano sonata. His Variations on a Theme of Beethoven uses the minuet from the Piano Sonata in E flat Op.31, known as the ‘Hunt’.  It was first performed at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique, which Saint-Saëns had helped to found in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, with the aim of promoting contemporary French music.

Debussy wrote only two of his own works for two pianos: Lindaraja is considered a warm-up to his masterpiece in this form, En blanc et noir (In black and white).  Debussy commented on the work that the movements "derive their color and feeling merely from the sonority of the piano,” insisting the work was not a comment on the first World War, but since virtually all of his correspondence from this period indicates a near obsession with the subject, it's hard to image the music is just about the piano. We hear distant bugle calls, quiet military drum rhythms, long spaces of silence, quotes from the Lutheran chorale Ein feste Burg (A mighty fortress) before the final movement delves into the rich possibilities of the piano with a black-and-white purity of musical expression.
Along with the famous Piano Concert No.2, Op.18, Rachmaninoff’s Suite No.2 for two pianos marked the return recovery of the composer’s musical activities following a three year silence caused by the  public failure of his Symphony No.1. Whether the story of Rachmaninoff’s romance of his psychiatrist’s daughter is true or not, there is plenty of passion and tenderness to be found in the Suite, not least as the third movement that is titled ‘Romance’. One of the most popular works in piano duo repertoire, it is a truly exhilarating piece of music that will undoubtedly leave with you blown away.
Tickets: £20 or £16 concessions for the unemployed, disabled people and their essential companions
 
 
Victor Lim
Thursday 13th July 2023, 12 noon
The Croston Theatre, Westholme School, Blackburn, BB2 6QU
 
Haydn                              Piano Sonata in C, Hob.XVI/50
Grieg                                From Holberg’s Time, Op.40
Rachmaninov                  Piano Sonata No.2 in B flat minor, Op.36 (revised version)
 
A RVIPW committee member and Head of Keyboard at Rossall School, South Korean pianist Victor Lim performs a programme of some of the most popular music in classical music.
 
Haydn’s joyful Piano Sonata in C Hob.XVI/50 is perhaps one of the greatest examples of humour in music. From the very first bar to the last, the Sonata constantly plays around with expectations and surprises that can only bring smiles to its listener.
Grieg’s From Holberg’s Time, more widely known as Holberg Suite, was written in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754), a Dano-Norwegian playwright best known for his comedies. In homage of the playwright, Grieg takes Baroque dances from Holberg’s era and infuses rich harmonies, poetic melodies as well as humour. Contrary to general belief, the Suite was originally written for the piano but one year later the composer arranged it in its now more famous version of string orchestra.
Following Grieg’s celebration of Holberg, Victor will celebrate Rachmaninoff’s 150th anniversary of birth with the colossus Piano Sonata No.2. Started in Italy and finished in Russia, the Sonata No.2 is not only a technical tour-de force but contains the most magical fantasies, lush harmonies, and exquisite melodies.
Tickets: £13 or £9 concessions for the unemployed, disabled people and their essential companions
 
 
Tyler Hay
Thursday 13th July 2023, 7.30pm
The Croston Theatre, Westholme School, Blackburn, BB2 6QU
 
Beethoven                       Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2 "Moonlight"
Mendelssohn                  A selection of 10 Songs Without Words
Mussorgsky                     Pictures At An Exhibition
 
It’s a joy to be able to welcome Tyler back to RVIPW for a third time with a programme filled with imagery.  Beethoven’s hugely popular ‘Moonlight’ Sonata will begin the evening, followed by a selection of Mendelssohn's most beloved piano works, the Songs without Words. These miniatures, which Mendelssohn composed throughout his life, contain some of his most beautifully crafted and heartfelt writing, serving as a very personal musical diary in which the composer expressed very precisely musical ideas that had, he alleged, no verbal equivalent. It was left to later publishers to suggest titles for the pieces, a procedure that Mendelssohn himself did not like.
 
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is a vivid representation in music of ten paintings by Mussorgsky’s good friend Viktor Hartmann.  – the exhibition in question was organised after the artist’s untimely death.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but music can paint a thousand pictures. A hut on hen’s legs, an angry gnome, and a ceremonial city bell: Pictures at an Exhibition is a musical kaleidoscope overflowing with fantastic colours.
Tickets: £20 or £16 concessions for the unemployed, disabled people and their essential companions
 
 
William Bracken
Friday 14th July, 12 noon
The Croston Theatre, Westholme School, Blackburn, BB2 6QU
 
J. S. Bach                          Toccata in C minor, BWV 911
Fanny Mendelssohn       Easter Sonata in A major
Messiaen                         Le Baiser de L’Enfant -Jésus (Vingt Regards de L’Enfant- Jésus)
Liszt                                  Après une lecture du Dante (Années de pèlerinage: deuxième année; Italie, S.161)
 
Will’s recital opens with Bach’s monumental Toccata in C minor featuring one of his longest fugues.  The work is an epic journey through textures and emotions.
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s bold and complex Easter Sonata, depicting the Passion of Christ, was composed in 1828, but was lost for 150 years and then attributed to her brother, Felix. Now widely regarded as a masterpiece, the work was finally presented under the name of its true author, on International Women's Day 2017.
Olivier Messiaen’s monumental and profound work Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus (Twenty Gazes on the Infant Jesus) is one of the most extraordinary and ground-breaking works in twentieth-century piano repertoire.  The individual movements, with their special titles and Messiaen’s own short, poetic explanations, are like staging posts in the great theological story; musical “stations of the cross” perhaps.  Its best-known movement, Le baiser de l’Enfant-Jésus (The Kiss of the Infant Jesus), is stunningly beautiful and lyrical.  To quote Messiaen’s own commentary on the movement:  “At each Communion, the Infant Jesus sleeps with us, close to the gate; then he opens it onto the garden and comes forth in a blaze of light to embrace us…”
 
The programme concludes with a work, colloquially referred to by pianists as the Dante Sonata.  Liszt, while under the spell of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, began work on a “fragment dantesque” which he later incorporated, in revised form, into the volume Italy of his Années de Pèlerinage. The single-movement sonata is based on the Canto “Inferno” in Dante’s poem. It describes the wild ride of the soul into hell in an effective manner, finally closing with several forgiving chords in a kind of transfiguration – one of the best examples of Liszt’s technical ingenuity and sound artistry.
 
Tickets: £13 or £9 concessions for the unemployed, disabled people and their essential companions
 
 
Martin Roscoe
Friday 14th July 2023, 7.30pm
The Croston Theatre, Westholme School, Blackburn, BB2 6QU
 
Beethoven                       32 Variations in C minor, WoO 80
Mendelssohn                  Prelude and Fugue in D major, Op. 35/2
Franck                              Prelude, Chorale and Fugue
J. S. Bach                          Goldberg Variations
 
Come and hear the Artistic Director of Ribble Valley International Piano Week, Martin Roscoe, for an evening of pianist masterpieces.  Beethoven’s substantial 32 Variations on an Original Theme in C minor, whose eight-measure theme based on a descending chromatic bass sets off a whirlwind of uninterrupted variations, begin proceedings, followed by Mendelssohn's Prelude No.2 in D major, marked Allegretto, coupled with a fugue, marked Tranquillo e sempre legato, the one a foil to the other.  The first half the of the evening will draw to a close with Franck's stunning masterpiece for solo piano, the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue.
Delayed from the planned performance in our 2022 Festival, the second half of the programme is Bach’s monumental Goldberg Variations, a gigantic set of 30 variations on the opening ‘Aria’. Whilst it is widely believed that Bach composed the Goldberg Variations to help Count Goldberg with his insomnia, this 1-hour long masterpiece is filled with exciting virtuosity, complex polyphony, alongside moments of transcendental beauty and darkness.
 
Tickets: £20 or £16 concessions for the unemployed, disabled people and their essential companions
 
             
Rose McLachlan
15th July 2023, 12 noon
The Croston Theatre, Westholme School, Blackburn, BB2 6QU
 
ALBÉNIZ             Iberia, Book 1
SCRIABIN            Sonata No. 2 in G sharp minor, “Sonata-Fantaisie”
RAVEL                 Le Tombeau de Couperin
 
Winner of the RNCM Chopin Prize, Kirklees Young Musician Award and Christopher Duke International Piano Competition, Rose McLachlan is one of the most exciting talents in the UK. Rose brings to RVIPW three virtuosic masterpieces of the 20th century, starting with with the first book of Albéniz’s Iberia which took inspirations from music and places from the composer’s native country of Spain. Rose will then take us to the Black Sea in the Atlantic, which inspired Scriabin to write his Piano Sonata No.2. Scriabin described the first movement of the Sonata as ‘the cam of a night by the seashore in the South’ an the second as ‘the stormy agitation of the vast expanse of ocean’.
 
Ravel dedicated each movement from ‘Le Tombeau de Couperin’ to close friends who had been killed in World War I. As its title suggests, the work alludes back to the music of the French composer Couperin as well as different dances from the Baroque period. Once cannot help but to feel the feeling nostalgia throughout the work, amidst its virtuosic energy and complexity, with Ravel dedicating the music to great French people of the past.
 
Tickets: £13 or £9 concessions for the unemployed, disabled people and their essential companions
 
 
Paul Lewis CBE
Saturday 15th July 2023, 7.30pm
The Croston Theatre, Westholme School, Blackburn, BB2 6QU
 
Schubert                          Piano Sonata No. 13 in A Major, D. 664
Schubert                          Piano Sonata No. 14 in A minor, D.7 84
Schubert                          Piano Sonata No. 17 in D Major, D. 850
 
“One of the great Schubertians of our time” Gramophone Magazine
Indulge in the dream combination of world-renowned Paul Lewis playing some of the most passionate and romantic works for piano ever written.
The multi-award winning pianist has regularly devoted himself to in-depth explorations of a particular composer’s output, with notable successes surveying aspects of the creativity of Beethoven, Brahms and Haydn.  In 2022, 20 years after his last Schubert series, Paul Lewis released his new CD of Schubert Piano Sonatas, including Sonata D. 664 with which he opens this programme.
The ‘little’ A major D664 is probably one of Schuberts best-known sonatas with a genial and song-like nature. The haunting Sonata No.14 is one of his pivotal sonatas, written around the time he got his syphilis diagnosis where, in the wake of that death sentence, everything became bleak. Our evening draws to a close with the imperious Sonata no. 17, composed on a journey away from Vienna where Schubert drew inspiration from the spectacular scenery of craggy peaks, green valleys, and mountain lakes.
Tickets: £20 or £16 concessions for the unemployed, disabled people and their essential companions
 
 
How to book:
By post: (cheques payable to 'RVIPW' Roger Darling, Hillside House, Bluestone Lane, Mawdesley, L40 2RJ.
By phone: 07810 504701 | Online at: www.rvipw.org.uk | On the door