Pierre-Laurent Aimard

Piano

The first of a series revealing Beethoven’s influence on the avant-garde pairs the mighty Hammerklavier Sonata with music by Charles Ives. Beethoven was a humanist as well as a musical revolutionary, and his music is steeped in both these qualities, including the Hammerklavier Sonata, which he composed in 1818. A century later, Charles Ives was becoming known as a radical modernist of his day, and later became recognised as the father of American music. He was hugely influenced by the Transcendentalist movement of writers and thinkers based around Concord, Massachusetts. The four movements of the Concord Sonata are dedicated to writers from the movement: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Amos Bronson and Louisa May Alcott, and Henry David Thoreau. Listen out, too, for quotes from the Hammerklavier throughout the work. Aimard’s three appearances in our 2018/19 Classical Season were greeted by rave reviews. Of his performance in our Ligeti in Wonderland weekend, The Independent commented: ‘The pianist never misses a beat over a cycle of 18 etudes that stretch the human limits of playing.’

Queen Elizabeth Hall