Ian Pace's first concert at City of 2023 comprises Liszt's piano transcriptions of works by Hector Berlioz, alongside works featuring string soloists from the City Pierrot Ensemble, Bridget Carey (viola) and Madeleine Mitchell (violin).
This concert is a coda to Pace's major performance project of last year (2022), during which he performed a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies, in the extraordinary solo piano versions by Liszt, together with works by other composers inspired by, or mirroring the themes of the symphonies.
The programme will include two of Berlioz's most famous orchestral works, Symphonie fantastique and the concertante Harold en Italie, with viola soloist Bridget Carey. In both these works, the timbres of the orchestra are transferred to the piano by Liszt, in a demonstration of both keyboard virtuosity and compositional ingenuity. The programme opens with Berlioz's Rêverie et Caprice, with violinist Madeleine Mitchell.
Please note the early start time of this concert. The event is free to attend, but seats are limited, so please do sign up to attend, via the 'register now' button above.
Madeleine Mitchell and Ian Pace will also be presenting a lunchtime duo concert on 10 May, comprising violin sonatas by Brahms and Beethoven. Please see the separate web page for details of this event.
Programme
- Berlioz, Rêverie et Caprice, Op. 8 (1841)
- Berlioz-Liszt, Harold en Italie (S. 472/2, 1850-59?, after Op. 16, 1834)
- Berlioz-Liszt, L'idée fixe - Andante amoroso d'après une mélodie de Berlioz (S. 395, 1833)
- Berlioz-Liszt, Symphonie fantastique (S. 470, 1833, after Op. 14, 1830)
Performers
- Ian Pace, piano
- Bridget Carey, viola
- Madeleine Mitchell, violin
About Ian Pace
Professor Ian Pace is a pianist of long-established reputation, specialising in the farthest reaches of musical modernism and transcendental virtuosity, as well as a writer and musicologist focusing on issues of performance, music and society and the avant-garde.
Based in London since 1993, he has pursued an active international career, performing in 24 countries and at most major European venues and festivals. His vast repertoire of all periods focuses particularly upon music of the 20th and 21st Century. He has given world premieres of over 250 piano works.
He has played with orchestras including the Orchestre de Paris under Christoph Eschenbach (with whom he premiered and recorded Dusapin's piano concerto À Quia), the SWF Orchestra in Stuttgart under Rupert Huber, and the Dortmund Philharmonic under Bernhard Kontarsky (with whom he gave a series of very well-received performances of Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand).
He has recorded nearby 40 CDs, including Michael Finnissy's five-and-a-half hour The History of Photography in Sound (of which he gave the world premiere in London in 2001) and the complete piano works of Brian Ferneyhough. Forthcoming recordings include the Piano Sonatas of Pierre Boulez, and John Cage's Music of Changes.
He has previously held positions at the University of Southampton and Dartington College of Arts, before becoming Professor of Music at the Department of Music at City, University of London. His areas of academic expertise include 19th century performance practice (especially relating to the music of Liszt and Brahms), modernist aesthetics, the Frankfurt School of thought, contemporary performance practice and issues, music and culture under fascism, the post-1945 avant-garde, in particular in West Germany, and issues of critical musicology and musicological method.
He has contributed to and co-edited a number of monographs and volumes, including Critical Perspectives on Michael Finnissy: Bright Futures, Dark Pasts, co-edited with Nigel McBride, (Routledge, 2019) and Researching and Writing on Contemporary Art and Artists: Challenges, Practices, and Complexities, co-edited with Christopher Wiley (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Forthcoming publications include monographs on music in the Weimar Republic and post-war Germany, a book on Brahms Performance Practice, and a history of specialist musical education in Britain.
About the City Pierrot Ensemble
The City Pierrot Ensemble is built around an outstanding core of musicians working at the Department of Performing Arts at City, including some who played in the earlier ensembles, The Pierrot Players and The Fires of London. The ensemble gave its debut performance in 2017 with Schoenberg's epochal expressionist song cycle Pierrot Lunaire (with guest soloists Alwynne Pritchard and Adam de la Cour), alongside Michael Finnissy's theatrical work Mr Punch, and Roger Redgate's Pierrot on the Stage of Desire.
They are resident at the Department, where their subsequent performances have included explorations of the late chamber music of Debussy, Berg, Webern and Zemlinsky, overlooked works by French composers Jolivet, Schmitt and Milhaud, Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht (in the rarely heard version for piano trio) and Simeon ten Holt's evening length minimalist work Canto Ostinato. Their 2021 festival concert at City featured Peter Maxwell Davies' music drama Eight Songs for a Mad King with baritone Benedict Nelson as soloist.
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