Hélène Grimaud - The Messenger (2020) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Hélène Grimaud has announced her new studio album, The Messenger, will be released on 2 October 2020. For her latest concept album Hélène Grimaud has created a fascinating pianistic dialogue between Mozart and the Ukrainian-born contemporary composer Valentin Silvestrov. Watch the video for the first single, the third movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, released today.

The recording sessions for The Messenger took place at the start of this year at an historic Mozart site in Salzburg, the Great Hall of the University, where Hélène Grimaud was joined by the Camerata Salzburg. The album includes three works by Mozart: the unfinished Fantasia in D minor K 397, the famous Piano Concerto in D minor K 466, and the Fantasia in C minor K 475. They are presented in chronological order of composition and all three are among the relatively small number of works in Mozart’s vast output written in minor keys. Hélène Grimaud noted, “minor keys were suggestive of confrontations with fate or destiny” for Mozart. She said it took her “many years of inner cultivation to fully recognise those burning, unpredictable currents rippling beneath the transcendental beauty. That is when playing this music became a necessity.”

Valentin Silvestrov’s The Messenger (1996) offers both a response to, and an echo of, Mozart’s music – the idea of acknowledging and paying tribute to what has gone before is central to his art as a composer. The Messenger starts with a theme reminiscent of Mozart and, like a messenger, creates a connection between the present and the world that existed before. Hélène Grimaud is passionate about Silvestrov’s music, which some describe as post-modernist or even neoclassical. “Like Arvo Pärt, Silvestrov’s music is harmonic, which far from being a weakness, is an enlightenment in its own right and very powerful in its simplicity,” noted Hélène. The composer’s own words hint at why this is for her so intriguing, “I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists”.

TRACKLIST

1. Hélène Grimaud - Mozart: Fantasia No. 3 in D Minor, K. 397
2. Hélène Grimaud - I. Allegro (Cadenza Beethoven)
3. Hélène Grimaud - II. Romance
4. Hélène Grimaud - III. Rondo. Allegro assai (Cadenza Beethoven)
5. Hélène Grimaud - Mozart: Fantasia No. 4 in C Minor, K. 475
6. Hélène Grimaud - Silvestrov: The Messenger (For Piano and Strings)
7. Hélène Grimaud - I. Wedding Waltz
8. Hélène Grimaud - II. Postlude
9. Hélène Grimaud - III. Morning Serenade
10. Hélène Grimaud - Silvestrov: The Messenger (For Piano Solo)



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