Concert Calendar

Event Information

• Thu

  03

  Sep

  2009

  Piano duo concert

  16:00 Arkadia International Bookshop
  Pohjoinen Hesperiankatu 9
  00260 Helsinki
  Finland
  

  Piano Duo Kati Arikoski & Anna-Mari Murdvee

  This evening in Arkadia we will perform two originally written pieces for piano duet: Fantasie in F-minor by Schubert and Ma Mère l’Oye by Maurice Ravel. Between these two pieces we play a transcription of Claude Debussy’s two dances.

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  Radio YLE Pohjanmaa’s little interview (in finnish) of our piano duo:
  Radio Yle Pohjanmaa interview

  PROGRAM:

  We will start our concert with Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose), which is a musical work by French composer and pianist Maurice Ravel.

  Ravel originally wrote this piece as a piano duet for the Godebski children, Mimi and Jean, ages 6 and 7. Ravel dedicated this work for four hands to the children (just as he had dedicated an earlier work, Sonatine to their parents). Here are the movements of this piece:

  I. Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant (Pavane of Seeping Beauty)

  II. Petit Poucet (Little Tom Thub)

  III. Laideronnette, Impératrice des pagodes (Little Ugly Girl, Empress of the Pagodas)

  IV. Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête (Conversation of Beauty and the Beast)

  V. Le jardin féerique (The Fairy Garden)

  Sleeping Beauty and Little Tom Thumb were based on the tales of Charles Perrault, while Little Ugly Girl, Empress of the Pagodas was inspired by a tale (The Green Serpent) by Perrault’s “rival” Marie-Catherine, Comtesse d’Aulnoy. Beauty and the Beast is based upon the version of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. The origin of The Fairy Garden is not entirely known.

  After Ravel we will move on to another French composer- Claude Debussy. Along with Maurice Ravel he is considered one of the most prominent figures working within the field of Imressionistic music, though he himself didn’t like the term when applied to his compositions.

  We will pay a transcription for four hand piano duo of his work Danses sacrée et profane (Sacred Dance & Profane Dance)

  Originally this work was composed for chromatic harp & string orchestra (1903).

  The Sacred Dance is based on a pentatonic (five-note) scale, commonly heard in folk music. While it is written to a hymnlike meter, the Profane Dance is syncopated. It seems that Debussy, with due regard for the antiquity of the harp (one of the oldest instruments in existence), based the first, slow dance on what he imagined Greco-Roman music must have been like. Another likely source of inspiration may well have been the antique flavor of erik Satie’s Gymnopédies for piano, which Debussy greatly admired, and two of which he orchestrated. The second dance is much faster, and takes the form of a waltz in the key of D major.

  We will end our concert to The Fantasia in F Minor by Franz Schubert, D 940 (Op. posth. 103). It is one of Schubert’s most important works for more than one pianist and one of his most important piano works altogether. Schubert composed it in 1828, the last year of his life, and dedicated it to his pupil, Karoline Esterházy. Musicologist Christopher Gibbs has characterized the work as “among not only his greatest but his most original” compositions for piano duet.

  The Fantasia is divided into four movements: Allegro molto moderato, Largo, Scherzo- allegro vivace and Finale- allegro molto moderato. Movements are interconnected and played without pause.