Klassik Forum Chur: Claire Huangci & Claire Levacher

City of Love hardly does justice to the complexity of the cultural metropolis of Paris. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the city with its density of great artists was a good starting point for all those who tried to be in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, Emmanuel Chabrier never succeeded in doing so, quite the opposite: his opera Le roi malgré lui was largely marked by bad luck – the Opéra-Comique in Paris burned down a week after its premiere and Chabrier's opera never really came into its own afterwards. Only the Fête polonaise played here soon found its way into the repertoire in its orchestral version. The counterexample to this is Igor Stravinsky's Firebird, because the first performance already made waves throughout Paris, which not even the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev could have foreseen
who commissioned the work. After all, the unknown Stravinsky was neither his first nor his second choice. A stroke of luck by Diaghilev and just the right thing for the Parisian audience.
Others, such as Sergei Prokofiev, had to take detours before they met with sympathetic reactions. In Chicago, Prokofiev's powerful touch and the unusual harmony of his Third Piano Concerto left the concert hall cold. It was quite different in Paris: his performance was a great success and artists such as Maurice Ravel were amazed by his compositional and piano skills. Prokofiev had found his city in Paris, even if this meant emigration from his missing homeland.


Ensemble:
Musikkollegium Winterthur

Head:
Claire Levacher (Head)

Soloist:
Claire Huangci (piano)

Program:

Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–1894) 10′
Fête polonaise, from: Le Roi malgré lui (1887)

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) 27′
Concerto for piano and orchestra
No. 3 in C major, op. 26 (1921)

Intermission 20′

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) 28′
The Firebird, ballet suite (1909/1919)
Introduction – L'oiseau de feu et sa danse –
Variation de l'oiseau de feu Ronde des princesses
Danse infernale du roi Kastcheï Berceuse – Final