French connections in 20th century classical music
Young pianist Louis Perera is back with a new concert of Musical Excursions after a lapse of two years. His first, an orchestral concert, was very well received for bringing in a fresh breeze with Twentieth Century classical pieces.
Fruzsina Szucs
The forthcoming concert is an excursion on two pianos. For more than an year Louis has been part of a professional piano duo with his classmate at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), in Mandhester, UK, the Hungarian pianist Fruzsina Szucs. Having recently won the RNCM’s Piano Duo Prize, they are here to share some of their most cherished pieces with Sri Lankan audiences. The pair has performed across the UK, in duets as well as solos, to great acclaim.
This concert focuses on French connections in classical music of the 20th century, exploring such movements as Impressionism, Jazz and Neoclassicism. It centres around Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune or the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. Coinciding with the year of Debussy’s 100th death anniversary, the concert is strung together with some brilliant pieces of that era.
It starts off with Franz Schubert’s Fantasie in F minor for Four Hands, a tragic piece often considered the epitome of Romanticism. Thence to a lively selection from Brahms’ Waltzes op.39 and on to Poulenc, Chabrier, Piazzolla and, of course, Debussy.
Louis Perera
The centrepiece, Afternoon of a Faun, based by Debussy on the poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, is where a faun dreams of trysting with wood nymphs. Full of yearning and sensuality, it is a monumental landmark that changed the very idea of ‘what is music’. Another piece is Francis Poulenc’s L’Embarquement pour Cythère inspired by the painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau, dealing with a group of lovers arriving at Cythère, the birthplace of Venus and so the Island of Love.
The last piece for the evening will be Astor Piazzolla’s Adiós Nonino, arranged for two pianos by Pablo Ziegler. Composed to bid adieu to a departed father, it has been chosen by Louis for his own father Austin Perera. The concert is in fact dedicated to this beloved figure who passed away due to cancer ten years ago. In his memory, the proceeds from the sale of tickets will be donated to the National Cancer Institute of Sri Lanka. Audience members who might feel generous as they pass through the doors of the theatre at the end of the concert could donate to the cause.
The concert is sponsored by MAS Holdings, the Sunday Times and the Daily Mirror.
Musical Excursions will go on the boards at the Lionel Wendt theatre on April 8 at 7 p.m. Tickets Rs 2,000 and Rs. 750 (balcony) are now available at the Lionel Wendt.