Stefanovich & Dell-Lillinger-Westergaard

• Concerts

It’s about logic, thematic work and the highest artistic demands: the sonata is to the solo instrument what the symphony is to the orchestra and the string quartet to chamber music – the king among genres. »And this is precisely what interests me,« declares star pianist Tamara Stefanovich. »Why do we take this one form for centuries and redress it time and again?«

In her concert in the Elbphilharmonie Recital Hall, she contrasts two piano sonatas from the 20th century by Dmitri Shostakovich and Pierre Boulez before she rounds off the evening by improvising together with her jazz ensemble SDLW – an exciting piece of bridge building between form and freedom.

Shostakovich’s former piano teacher described his first piano sonata as a »sonata for metronome to the accompaniment of piano«. Experimental, harsh and dissonant, this virtuoso work conveys a feeling of constant movement and, at the same time, grapples with the Russian and western avant-garde. It was a showpiece of the then 20 year old, who repeatedly played it in concert himself.

Pierre Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata also fits the motto of the International Music Festival »Future«: the French composer wrote a traditional sonata form for the last time – only to break with it and explore new, untrodden paths: »After the Second Piano Sonata, I never referred to a past form again. I always found a form that was conceived with the idea itself.«

PERFORMERS

Tamara Stefanovich piano

Christopher Dell vibraphone

Christian Lillinger drums

Jonas Westergaard double bass

PROGRAM

Dmitri Schostakowitsch
Sonata for Piano No. 1 in D major, Op. 12

Pierre Boulez
Sonata for Piano No. 2

- Interval -

Dell-Lillinger-Westergaard
Bellingham

Dell-Lillinger-Westergaard
Frankfurter Blocks

Stefanovich-Dell-Lillinger-Westergaard
New Co-Compositions