Piano Solo – Lise de la Salle

The acclaimed French pianist Lise de la Salle has appeared at Konserthuset Stockholm on several previous occasions, both in solo recitals and with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. Most recently, in 2024, she was the soloist in Mozart’s dramatic Piano Concerto No. 20. We are delighted to welcome her back, with a programme that moves between fantasy, transformation and concentrated reflection.

Fantasy runs like a thread through the programme. Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel was a brilliant improviser, and his Fantasia in F-sharp minor moves freely and unpredictably between shifting expressions. In Chopin’s Fantasia in F minor/A-flat major, a grand Romantic drama unfolds, while in Seven Fantasies Brahms brings together capriccios and intermezzos filled with both power and intimacy.

But the programme also opens onto other musical worlds. In Metamorphosis V, Philip Glass allows a limited body of material to change gradually, while in Scriabin’s late Prelude Op. 74 No. 2 the harmony seems almost to float freely. After the interval comes the Catalan composer Frederic Mompou’s understated Música callada – ‘silent music’ – before the recital concludes on an altogether different scale.

Franz Liszt’s monumental Après une lecture de Dante, inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, is a ‘Fantasia quasi Sonata’: a visionary journey from darkness and violent contrasts towards ever more luminous sonorities. A work that calls upon the piano’s entire expressive range.