Piano Solo – Hélène Grimaud

Hélène Grimaud is one of the foremost pianists of our time. She made her international breakthrough in the late 1980s when she was invited by Daniel Barenboim to perform with the Orchestre de Paris. Since then, she has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, and performs regularly in recitals and chamber music.

Alongside her musical career, she is deeply engaged in human rights and environmental issues, notably as co-founder of a wolf conservation centre outside New York. In this concert, she performs two of the most significant farewell works in music history: the final piano sonatas by Beethoven and Schubert.

Beethoven’s sonata opens with a weighty, majestic introduction before a passionate Allegro takes over with tremendous force. The work has only two movements, yet with the greatest possible contrast – a wild and turbulent first movement, followed by a sublime and monumental second, in which Beethoven seems to place no limits on himself, exploring entirely new musical possibilities.

Franz Schubert was gravely ill when he wrote his final three piano sonatas, just a few months before his death in 1828. And although he was only 31, it is as if he is here taking stock of his life. In the last sonata, a sense of introspection is ever-present, and towards the end we hear a struggle between light and darkness. It is one of Schubert’s most beloved and most enigmatic works.