Parisienne Festival: Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring

Yung-Li Chen piano
Olivia Chew piano

Poulenc Sonata for Two Pianos 

Natalie Gabrielli piano
Luigi Carroccia
Domonkos Csabay piano

Stravinsky Rite of Spring arr. for 4 hands 

“Poulenc is music itself, I know of no music more direct, more simply expressed nor which goes so unerringly to its target”  (Milhaud, writing about his friend).  About the Sonata, a critic wrote, “It is piano without pretence, real piano where each instrument converses with the other in perfect understanding and without interrupting”. 

The Rite of Spring was first performed in Paris in 1933, a premiere notorious for the riot among the audience that it inspired. Stravinsky transcribed it for piano 4-hands the same year, and the work loses none of it exhilarating pagan barbarism in this version.