Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano

The Candlelight Concert Society presents pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard in a program of works by C.P.E. Bach, Beethoven, Benjamin, Mozart, Sweelinck, and Volkonsky. Your musical imagination will stretch with an evening of fantasias, pieces rooted in improvisation and the abandonment of strict musical form. Ranging from anguished to jovial, the range of emotional and musical colors is a highlight of this program:

• Mozart: Fantasie No. 3 in D minor, K397

• Sweelinck: Fantasia chromatica SwWV 258

• Mozart: Fantasie in C minor, K475

• Andrei Volkonsky: Musica Stricta

• Mozart: Fantasie in F

• C.P.E. Bach: Fantasia in C major, Wq 59/6

• Mozart: Fantasie in C minor KV. 396

• Beethoven: Fantasia, Op. 77

• George Benjamin: Fantasy on Iambic Rhythm

Considered a “brilliant musician and an extraordinary visionary” (The Wall Street Journal), French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard enjoys an internationally celebrated career. As a master performer of Beethoven, Aimard recorded Beethoven’s entire catalogue of piano concertos and both the “Hammerklavier” Sonata and “Eroica Variations.” As a resident artist he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, and the Lucerne Festival.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard is widely acclaimed as a key figure in the music of our time and has had close collaborations with many leading composers including György Ligeti, whose complete works for piano he has recorded. He has also worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, and Pierre Boulez, who appointed Aimard, aged 19, to become the Ensemble Intercontemporain’s first solo pianist. Praised by The Guardian as “one of the best Messiaen interpreters around,” Aimard has had a close association to the composer himself and with Yvonne Loriod, with whom he studied at the Paris Conservatoire.