Alexandre Tharaud performs Mozart, Mahler and Beethoven

Pianist Alexandre Tharaud will open the concert on 27 August with music by Mozart, performing rarely played works such as the Suite K. 399, as well as the more familiar Sonata K. 331. Following in the footsteps of that master of the genre, J. S. Bach, Mozart's work is structured according to the traditional suite convention whereby various dances follow one another – overture, allemande, courante. Clearly influenced by the baroque, Suite K. 399 is usually performed on the harpsichord. Specialising in the baroque repertoire, and endowed with marvellously clear articulation, Alexandre Tharaud is one of those rare musicians of our times to produce a baroque sound from the modern piano, eliciting the timbre of plucked strings, incisive and rousing. The Sonata K. 331, especially well known for its last movement, Rondo alla Turca, starts with an elegant and intimate Theme and Variations. This leads to a Minuet before proceeding to the delightful Turkish March, with its lively tune and irresistible beat.

Alexandre Tharaud will then play his own transcription of the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, one of the composer's most intimate movements, where emotion, sensuality and poetry are transcribed into music. It may have been the overwhelming tenderness and heightened romanticism of the Adagietto that persuaded film director Luchino Visconti to use it as a leitmotiv for his film Death in Venice, thereby making it a popular favourite.

This evening's recital will end with the Beethoven sonata known as the Appassionata (1805). Among the 32 Sonatas he wrote, opus 57 is considered to be one of his most daring and expressive. Exploiting every possible nuance of the keyboard, using silences to great effect, requiring stamina and superb technical prowess, the Appassionata begins in a murmur and ends in a demonic dance, an exhausting yet exhilarating whirlwind.

Alexandre Tharaud appears courtesy of Erato / Warner Classics.

Photo: Yannick Perrin.