Patrick Hemmerlé (Piano)
Sample Programmes
Programme 1: Operatic transcriptions: (45 minutes)
-Pabst/Tchaikovsky, Eugen Oneguin.
-Wagner/Liszt: Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
-Strauss/Grainger: Ramble on Love from Rosenkavalier -Bizet/Weiss/Hemmerlé: Fantasy on Carmen
-Mozart/Liszt: Paraphrase on Don Juan
These are 4 transcriptions from major operas that all have romantic love as a central theme, though it could not be treated more differently. Tchaikovsky is straightforwardly romantic. Wagner’s Liebestod is the place where love and death unite. Strauss talks about the nostalgia of an ageing woman who knows when and how to make a graceful exit. Weiss's take on Carmen is an completely unknown yet fabulous paraphrase, phenomenally difficult, making very clever use of the various themes in the opera. Mozart's Don Juan is about the power of seduction raised to an archetypal level.
Programme 2: Spanish music: (40 minutes)
-Granados: La Maja y el Ruiseñor, El amor y la Muerte, El Pelele from Goyescas.
-Albeniz: Iberia, any one of the 4 books.
Iberia and Goyescas are the two defining masterpieces that did put Spain back on the map musically. Drawing on the inheritance from Chopin and Liszt, Albeniz and Granados invented a new way of writing for the piano, and wrote a music that is both anchored in Spanish traditional music, and revolutionary.
Programme 3: Schubert (35 minutes)
-Schubert: Sonata in G major, D894
This is one of the most original and successful sonatas written by Schubert, and one of his most important works altogether.
Programme 4: French water music (40 minutes)
Fauré: Barcarolle 1
Ducasse: Barcarolle 2
Ravel: Jeux d’Eau
Debussy: Reflets dans l’Eau
Abel Decaux :“La Mer”, from Clairs de Lune
Aubert: Sillage 1 “Sur le Rivage
Dupont: Le Soleil joue avec les Vagues, from la Maison dans les Dunes
Programme 5: Song transcriptions (40 minutes)
Bach/Hemmerlé: Aus Liebe, from Matthew Passion.
Bach/Rummel: Cantata Arias (2 or 3)
Liszt: Schubert: Die Forelle, Ave Maria
Liszt: Sonnet Petrarque 104
Rachmaninoff: Lilacs
Tchaikovsky/Pabst: Lullaby
Tchaikovsky/Cherkassky: None but the Lonely Heart
Balakirev/Glinka: The Lark
This 40 minutes programme is a pendant to the operatic programme, of which it can be a first half, although it can stand independently. It focuses on song transcriptions, starting with sacred music, moving on to lieder and songs, some of them arranged by a third party, some by the composers themselves.
Programme 6: Sonata as tragedy (75 minutes)
-Beethoven: Tempest or Pathetique Sonata
-Chopin; 2nd Sonata
-Janacek: Sonata 1905
-Prokofiev: 6th Sonata
This programme puts into perspective Sonatas that are expressions of tragedy, personal in the first half, and collective in the second. These works also share a lot of thematic material, which is revealed by putting them in perspective. All these works function by obsessive repetition of little melodic cells of three notes, which convey restlessness and anxiety, or sometimes a near hypnotic state.
This programme is a full evening programme in two halves.
Programme 7: Baroque Suite:
-Bach: 5th French Suite
-Maurice Emmanuel: Sonatine 5 “Suite Française”
-Kapustin: Suite in the Old Style
This put into perspective three dance suites that are as far apart in the language they use as they are close in spirit.
Bach’s French Suite is one of his most successful works in the genre, a work full of earthy delights.
Maurice Emmanuel extensive use of modal scales gives an unusual flavour to a music that is bursting with life and vitality.
Kapustin’s idiom is rooted in the jazz of Oscar Peterson. It is rather delightful to hear this sound world in conjunction with old baroque dance forms, in a sort of ‘fusion’ style that is as quirky as it is attractive.
Programme 8: (120 minutes)
Any of the 2 books of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier
Patrick has spent years working and thinking about this music, and has arrived at an interpretation which vastly differs from mainstream interpretations.
Programme 9: (60 minutes)
24 Chopin Etudes.