Monday 21, July - 20h - Opéra Berlioz / Le Corum

Christian Zacharias
Piano

Joseph Haydn

Sonate n°44 en fa Majeur Hob XVI-29  

Robert Schumann
Humoreske en si bémol Majeur opus 20  

Domenico Scarlatti
Douze Sonates
â–ª mi Majeur Kk 162
▪ ré mineur Kk 213
▪ ré Majeur 278
â–ª sol Majeur Kk 91c
â–ª sol Majeur Kk 13
â–ª sol mineur Kk 4
â–ª sol Majeur Kk 2
â–ª si mineur Kk 27
â–ª ut Majeur Kk 132
â–ª ut Majeur Kk 406
▪ ré mineur 295
▪ ré Majeur Kk 29

Christian Zacharias is proposing a programme where the dominant theme is dazzling creativity and audacious fantasy. He invites us to follow Haydn to the court of Prince Esterházy, Schumann into a world where dark beings are absent, and finally Scarlatti under the Spanish sun.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote the first music for piano. In his footsteps, and steeped in the immense collective effort aimed at finding the veritable Germanic soul through art, Haydn also established personal emotion as a principle of composition. But it is the soul of Vienna that he will find in Mozart’s wake. Thus, the lightness of the three movements of his Sonata No. 44 show us to what degree he knew how to play on the importance of rhythmic and dynamic contrasts, managing to lead us from shadow to light and vice versa.
In 1838, Schumann spent a week at his piano, ‘writing, laughing and weeping, all at the same time’, eventually resulting in this long fresco all in one piece, which he baptised Grosse Humoreske and wherein he essentially plays on moods. From the ethereal reverie of the beginning to the sombre final meditation, there is a succession of exaltation, feverishness, intoxication, tenderness and resignation, tinged with bitterness… As always with him, the moments of happy calm can quickly veer to nightmare.
It is to Spain that Domenico Scarlatti must be given back. Indeed, after spending ten years in Portugal, he left for Seville, then Madrid, which he would never leave again, staying nearly thirty years in the service of the young queen of Spain, as her harpsichord teacher. His music was henceforth regenerated by oriental, Gypsy and Hebrew sources, which were not totally unknown to him, having been born in Naples, which was Spanish territory at the time. The 555 essercizi (Exercises called sonatas) that he wrote for his student are a concentration of dance rhythms and digital virtuosity.

Catherine Michaud