Pre-CBSO Showcase: Emanuil Ivanov

Photo © Lilia Kirilova

Emanuil Ivanov piano

Schoenberg Six Little Piano Pieces Op.19
Ravel Gaspard de la nuit (Trois poèmes pour piano d'après Aloysius Bertrand).

This forms part of our celebration of the six years Emanuil has spent with us at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, studying with Pascal Nemirovski and Anthony Hewitt.

On 14 June he celebrates the centenary of the death of Ferruccio Busoni with a performance of Busoni's Piano Concerto at RBC, conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

Emanuil won the 2019 Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition and the 2023 Sheepdrove Intercollegiate Piano Competition. Forthcoming highlights include the release of a Naxos CD of Scarlatti and his Wigmore Hall debut on 9 October when he will perform Rzewski's The People United Will Never Be Defeated!

Tonight's programme offers contemporary and contrasting approaches to writing piano music at the beginning of the twentieth century. Schoenberg wrote the first five of his Little Piano Pieces in a single day, 19 February 1911, adding the sixth on 17 June shortly after the death of Gustav Mahler.

Remaining firmly in the Austro-German tradition and the Expressionist aesthetic of the time he nonetheless begins to explore smaller forms and to move still further from traditional functional tonality. Ravel joked that Scarbo would be more difficult to play than Balakirev's Islamey, and in 1908 consciously creates one of the crowning glories of the Lisztian tradition of programmatic virtuoso pianism.

This concert takes place prior to the CBSO performance of Debussy and Stravinsky in the Symphony Hall at 7.30pm.

Debussy and Stravinsky | City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (cbso.co.uk)

Running time approx.30 minutes