SEONG-JIN CHO

In the first half of this Prague Spring recital the audience will hear three works by Maurice Ravel. The introductory piece presents the French composer as an artist who reflected on the past in a highly distinctive way. Menuet antique observes the typical ternary form of the early dance and employs archaic harmonic progressions. The three-movement Sonatine then combines the Classical form with Impressionist colours. Gaspard de la nuit, however, is one of Ravel’s most progressive and, at the same time, technically most difficult works. Here the composer was inspired by three prose poems by Aloysius Bertrand, a French Romantic and forerunner of the Symbolist movement, who influenced such luminaries as Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé. The virtuosic piano texture harks back to Liszt, while the extremely sophisticated harmonies head well into the 20^th century.

The evening will culminate in a performance of Franz Liszt’s extensive cycle Années de pèlerinage, Deuxième année: Italie (Years of Pilgrimage, Second Year: Italy). The almost hour-long programme suite could be seen as the composer’s stylised musical memoirs of the Apennine Peninsula, where he was enchanted by the exquisite scenery, the visual arts, and the poetry of Petrarch and Dante.