Katowice Culture Nature Festival / Paris Spleen / Piano Recital: Alexandre Tharaud - NOSPR

In his collection Le Spleen de Paris (Paris Spleen), published in 1862, Charles Baudelaire depicts the atmosphere of Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century – back then, a city where the elemental forces of excitement and melancholy fertilised the minds of great artists in a new, already modernist era. He turns his attention to the everyday lives of Parisians, describes popular streets and cafés and portrays artistic bohemia in full flourish. The recital programme by the French pianist Alexandre Tharaud offers a musical journey through Paris. It gathers works by composers whose lives and imaginations were closely bound to the city in a broad period, ranging from the eighteenth century (Rameau), through the turn of the nineteenth century (Fauré, Debussy, Dukas, Satie), and into the twentieth century (Poulenc). The programme includes Tharaud’s own piano transcriptions of two renowned symphonic frescoes: Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prélude to the Afternoon of a Faun,based on a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé) and Dukas’s L’Apprenti sorcier (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ballad), as well as the luminous hymn Cantique de Jean Racine (Song of Jean Racine) by Fauré. As a city of cabarets and cafés, Paris can be heard in Francis Poulenc’s Improvisation, dedicated to Édith Piaf, and in the brief miniatures authored by the eccentric Montmartre habitué Erik Satie. His hitherto unpublished sketches and works – only recently discovered by the Japanese composer Sato Matsui and the English musicologist and composer James Nye – will be performed in Poland for the first time thanks to Alexandre Tharaud. During the concert, the pianist will also perform a transcription of the song Je te veux, originally written for the then popular Parisian singer Paulette Darty, affectionately known as the ‘Queen of the Slow Waltzes’.

Wojciech Stępień

Concert duration (intermission included): approximately 120 minutes

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