Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays Mozart, Sweelinck, Volkonski, Bach, Beethoven, and Benjamin

Pierre-Laurent Aimard's bold and imaginative program at the Philharmonie de Paris celebrates the genre of the piano fantasy through the ages—a genre that has often given free rein for exploration beyond traditional formal bounds. Hand-picked as a soloist in Pierre Boulez's Ensemble intercontemporain in 1977, where he helped champion 20th-century music for decades, the multi-faceted Aimard shines here in a brilliant variety of repertoire from the 17th (the Echo Fantasia by Dutch composer Sweelinck) and 18th centuries (the sublime Fantasias of Mozart and Beethoven, which show off Aimard's improvisatory and compositional talents, plus one by his "master of the Fantasy," C.P.E. Bach) to the 20th (Andrei Volkonsky and Sir George Benjamin).