Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s 2010-11 season

In a season that also takes him from London to Tokyo and Moscow to Milan, Pierre-Laurent Aimard looks forward to a full program of North American engagements.  He launched the new season with the release of his landmark all-Ravel album with the Cleveland Orchestra, which, besides the two Piano Concertos, features Miroirs, “whose poetry and liveliness Aimard relays like an oracle” (Cleveland Plain-Dealer).  This haunting solo piano suite also forms the centerpiece of Aimard’s high-profile December U.S. recital tour, in Los Angeles (Dec 1), Philadelphia (Dec 3), Chicago (Dec 5), and Carnegie Hall (Dec 8).  The pianist soon returns again to the historic New York venue, rejoined by the Cleveland Orchestra under its music director, Franz Welser-Möst; after three performances of Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto in Cleveland (Jan 20-22), Aimard joins the orchestra on tour in Bloomington (Jan 25), Miami (Jan 28 & 29) Ann Arbor (Feb 1), Chicago (Feb 2), Carnegie Hall (Feb 5) and Newark (Feb 6).  Back in New York the following month, Aimard makes four appearances as soloist in Ligeti’s Piano Concerto with the New York Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen (March 10-15), before embarking on his second North American recital tour of the season, with performances in Princeton (May 3) and Atlanta’s Spivey Hall (May 7).
 
As the UK’s Independent newspaper observes, “It is hard to imagine a pianist better qualified to play works by Ravel…than Pierre-Laurent Aimard.”  The centerpiece of the pianist’s forthcoming U.S. recital tour, Miroirs (1904-5) comprises five movements, each of which Ravel dedicated to a different member of the French impressionist group “Les Apaches”; each movement was intended to evoke in sound its dedicatee’s reflection as seen in the mirror.  For his December recital program, Aimard juxtaposes Miroirs with works by Chopin and with Messiaen’s Préludes, as featured on his 2008 album Hommage à Messiaen.  As a Messiaen Competition winner and former piano student of Yvonne Loriod, the composer’s wife, Aimard has championed Messiaen’s music throughout his career, and was described by the New Yorker’s Russell Platt as “one of the composer’s supreme interpreters.”  The December tour takes Aimard to Los Angeles’s Walt Disney Concert Hall (Dec 1), Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center (Dec 3), Chicago’s Symphony Center (Dec 5), and, in the “Keyboard Virtuosos I” series, New York City’s Carnegie Hall (Dec 8).
 
Aimard’s relationship with the Cleveland Orchestra goes back many years.  He recently served as its Artist-in-Residence for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons, besides recording Ravel’s piano concertos under Boulez’s direction for his most recent CD release.  Now Aimard reunites with the orchestra, this time with its music director, Franz Welser-Möst, for three performances of Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (1930-31) at Cleveland’s Severance Hall (Jan 20-22).  After Aimard’s account of that work at Lincoln Center last year, the New York Times’s Anthony Tommasini remarked: “The concerto would be a staple if it were not so fiendishly difficult.  But without any facade of virtuosic showiness, the intensely focused and technically prodigious Mr. Aimard played it with ease.”  Aimard then joins the orchestra on tour, playing Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in Bloomington (Jan 25) and Chicago (Feb 2).  For the rest of his tour with the Cleveland Orchestra, Aimard performs Schumann’s Piano concerto in Miami (Jan 28 & 29), Ann Arbor (Feb 1), Newark (Feb 6), and at New York’s Carnegie Hall on February 5. 
 
The pianist’s next New York appearance is on the other side of town at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, where he gives four performances of Ligeti’s Piano Concerto – “a signature work for Pierre-Laurent Aimard” (John von Rhein, American Record Guide) – as part of the New York Philharmonic’s “Hungarian Echoes” festival, with festival conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen (March 10, 11, 12, & 15).  Aimard’s recording of the composer’s Études for Sony Masterworks won a 1997 Gramophone Award, and indeed, it was Ligeti who described Aimard as “today’s leading interpreter of contemporary piano music,” citing his “masterful technique, the depth of his sensitivity, and the many nuances of his music, as well as…his absolute identification with the spirit of every single work he plays.”
 
In a characteristically full season of recitals – in London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Moscow, and Tokyo, to name but a few – Aimard returns to North America for a second recital tour in the first week of May. First stop is at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre Center (May 3), where Aimard explores the work of Liszt, Bartók, Ravel, Messiaen and contemporary composer Marco Stroppa.   At Aimard’s next performance, sonatas by Wagner, Berg, and Scriabin prepare the way for that of Liszt, with whose epic B-minor Sonata Aimard closes the program at Atlanta’s Spivey Hall (May 7).
 
Beyond America, the pianist’s orchestral engagements are also manifold; highlights include Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto with Milan’s Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala and Gustavo Dudamel; Ravel with Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra and Charles Dutoit and with Paris’s Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France with Myung-Whun Chung; and Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 on a six-city European tour with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Robin Ticciati.  Yet this intense schedule is just the sort on which Aimard thrives; he is, after all, “one of the most brilliant and distinctive pianists before the public today” (Boston Globe).
 
 
Pierre-Laurent Aimard: upcoming 2010-11 engagements
 
Nov 12
Newcastle
Northern Sinfonia / Thomas Zehetmair
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5
La Scala
 
Nov 15, 16 & 17
Milan
Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala / Gustavo Dudamel
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5
La Scala
 
Nov 19
Moscow
Master class / workshop
Moscow State Philharmonic
 
Nov 20
Moscow
National Philharmonic of Russia / Mikhail Agrest
Ravel: Piano Concerto in D major (for left hand)
Tchaikovsky Concert Hall
 
Nov 21
Moscow
Recital: Messiaen: Préludes; Ravel: Miroirs; Boulez: Notations
Tchaikovsky Concert Hall
 
Nov 23
Cologne
Recital: Benjamin, Ravel, Chopin, Beethoven
Cologne Philharmonie
 
Nov 28
Lucerne
Lucerne Festival
Recital: Messiaen, Ravel, Chopin
Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern
 
Dec 1
Los Angeles
Recital:
Messiaen: Préludes
Ravel: Miroirs
Chopin: Barcarolle in F-sharp major, Op. 60
Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31
Walt Disney Concert Hall
 
Dec 3
Philadelphia
Recital:
Messiaen: Préludes
Ravel: Miroirs
Chopin: Barcarolle in F-sharp major, Op. 60
Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31
Kimmel Center
 
Dec 5
Chicago
Recital:
Messiaen: Préludes
Ravel: Miroirs
Chopin: Barcarolle in F-sharp major, Op. 60
Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31
Symphony Center
 
Dec 8
New York
Recital: “Keyboard Virtuosos 1”
Messiaen: Préludes
Ravel: Miroirs
Chopin: Barcarolle in F-sharp major, Op. 60
Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31
Carnegie Hall
 
Dec 13
Tokyo
Recital: Bartók, Liszt, Messiaen, Ravel
 
Dec 15-16
Tokyo
NHK Symphony Orchestra / Charles Dutoit
Ravel: Piano Concerto in G
Suntory Hall
 
Dec 18
Yokohama, Japan
NHK Symphony Orchestra / Charles Dutoit
Ravel: Piano Concerto in G
Yokohama Minato Mirai Hall
 
Jan 12 (2011)
Eindhoven
Recital: Liszt, Wagner, Berg, Scriabin
Muziekcentrum Frits Philips
 
Jan 20, 21 & 22
Cleveland, OH
Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst
R. Strauss: “Träumerei am Kamin” from Intermezzo
Hosokawa: Woven Dreams
Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 2
Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Severance Hall
 
Jan 25
Bloomington, IN
Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst
R. Strauss: “Träumerei am Kamin” from Intermezzo
Hosokawa: Woven Dreams
Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 2
Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Indiana University Musical Arts Center
 
Jan 28 & 29
Miami, FL
Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst
Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Schuman: Piano Concerto
Strauss: Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”)
 
Feb 1
Ann Arbor, MI
Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst
Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Schumann: Piano Concerto
Wagner: Overture to Tannhäuser
Hill Auditorium
 
Feb 2
New York
Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst
Wagner: Overture to Tannhäuser
Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 2
Strauss: Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”)
Symphony Center
 
 
Feb 5
New York
Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst
Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Schumann: Piano Concerto
Wagner: Overture to Tannhäuser
Carnegie Hall
 
Feb 6
Newark
Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst
Wagner: Overture to Tannhäuser
Schumann: Piano Concerto
Strauss: Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”)
New Jersey Performing Arts Center
 
Feb 16
Berlin
Recital: Stroppa, Liszt, Messiaen, Bartók, Ravel
 
Feb 21
Hamburg
Recital: Stroppa, Liszt, Messiaen, Bartók, Ravel
 
Feb 25
Paris
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France / Myung-Whun Chung
Messiaen: Réveil des oiseaux
Ravel: Piano Concerto in D major (for left hand)
La Salle Pleyel
 
Feb 28
Istanbul
Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2
 
March 10, 11, 12, & 15
New York
“Hungarian Echoes” Festival
New York Philharmonic / Esa-Pekka Salonen
Ligeti: Piano Concerto
 
March 19–28
European tour with Mahler Chamber Orchestra / Robin Ticciati
Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2
   March 19: Dortmund, Germany
   March 23: Cologne, Germany
   March 24: Essen, Germany
   March 26: Heidelberg, Germany
   March 27: Vienna, Austria
 
April 3
Luxembourg
Recital: Liszt, Wagner, Berg, Scriabin
 
April 5
Detmold
Recital: Liszt, Bartók, Stroppa, Ravel, Messiaen
 
April 9
Heidelberg
Heidelberg Spring Festival
Recital: Recital: Liszt, Wagner, Berg, Scriabin
 
May 3
Princeton
Liszt: Aux Cyprès de la Villa d’Este n° 1 from Années de Pélérinage, Troisième année
Bartók: Nénie Op.9 No.4
Liszt: First Legend. Saint François d’Assise: La Prédication aux oiseaux
Stroppa: Tangata Manu
Liszt: Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este from Années de Pélérinage, Troisième année
Ravel: Jeux D’eau
Messiaen: Les Traquet Stapazin from Catalogue des oiseaux
Liszt: Vallee d’Obermann from Années de Pélérinage, Première année: Suisse
McCarter Theatre Center
 
May 7
Atlanta
Recital:
Wagner: Eine Sonate in das Album von Frau Mathilde Wesendonck
Berg: Piano Sonata in B minor, Op. 1
Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 9 in F “Black Mass”, Op. 68
Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor
Spivey Hall (debut)
 
May 18
Vienna
Recital
Wagner, Berg, Scriabin, Liszt
Vienna Konzerthaus
 
May 20
Vienna
Recital: Liszt, Bartók, Stroppa, Ravel, Messiaen
Vienna Konzerthaus
 
May 24
Paris
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 17
 
June 10-26
Aldeburgh, UK
Aldeburgh Festival 2011